Fundamentalists religious sects like the Muslim-based Taliban and Christian-based Exclusive Brethren remain unruffled by damming media exposure. If anything, such exposure strengthens their faith in themselves and consolidates their unwavering conviction in the righteousness of their worldview.

Whilst the rest of the word is shocked by alleged inhumane and brutal activities, they alone have ‘Truth’, their critics are messengers from the devil incarnate and they don’t watch television anyway.

Yet, before other Christian denominations become too smug, the Brethren are not alone in the use of intimidation and fear to keep their flock from drifting apart. Other fundamentalist Christian groups in our midst use similar intimidatory strategies, resulting in the isolation of individuals from their families and awful trauma experienced by those that have been captured by their spell, and then try to break away.

I know of a number of such cases in my own social arena. How fascinating it is that, in a liberal society such as Australia, signatory to the International Charter of Human Rights, such brutality can keep going on without intervention by the law?

As for the multinational Christian churches, they have their own sordid histories that they would, no doubt, like to suppress.

When my hard working Catholic mother, a widow with eight children, impoverished by years of relentless school fees, transferred one of her children to a state school she was immediately threatened with excommunication from the church. That act of stupendous cruelty almost broke her indomitable spirit.

Maybe the Catholics have learned the lesson of their ways, and maybe, in time, the Brethren will too.

But the lessons of history (global and personal) have left me with a firm conclusion: for every person who finds solace and comfort in religion, there is at least one other who is the victim of religion-induced persecution, bigotry or bloody religious warfare.

The carnage is so huge, it is incalculable.

Chris Harries
September 2006

(Chris is a Tasmanian-based writer and social advocate. He is a former adviser to Green MP, Senator Bob Brown.)

Chris Harries

When my hard working Catholic mother, a widow with eight children, impoverished by years of relentless school fees, transferred one of her children to a state school she was immediately threatened with excommunication from the church. That act of stupendous cruelty almost broke her indomitable spirit.

Maybe the Catholics have learned the lesson of their ways, and maybe, in time, the Brethren will too.

Take care to be precise Chris. The exclusive Bretheren is not the Bretheren. They are two different ‘churches’. a bit like the Taliban and the Moslims.

Generally speaking there is but one Church; they are the people united with God through Jesus. Why Jesus puts up with all this nonsense I don’t know.
I think even the Catholics must be somewhat off-side with him.

But the Bretheren, whilst being a little short of our idea of hip, are an okay bunch, some of whom are good friends of mine. Whisky and family separation are not on their meeting agendae, that’s for sure.

MJL

Posted by Flounder on 28/09/06 at 09:32 AM

Considering there’s no archaeological, historical or verifiable evidence for the veracity of either bible, you can understand the barbarity of its followers attempts to enforce their illusions. Its an accept psychopathic approach.

The old testament is derived from the ancient Veda, Egyptian and other texts, and its sources have been verified archaeologically. The events it depicts can not be chronologically supported. The only archaeological evidence for the New testament comes from a copy written by a scribe more than 300 years later, again chronological, archaeological and historical evidence doesn’t support its veracity in relation to its story.

Then consider the god all monotheistic factions follow, happens to be the original Egyptian god of war Yahweh, gives us the reasons for its ongoing violent and destructive actions. Its interesting to note that since the inception of monotheism more than 3000 years ago, there has been less than 100 years in total where there hasn’t been a religious war, invasion or ethnic cultural cleansing by Yahweh’s followers.

The exclusive brethren are just being up front in their psychological barbarity, unlike most factional Yahweh sects, who preach love and caring, yet wage continuous psychological and physical war against all and sundry.

Posted by stormbay on 29/09/06 at 08:49 AM

I concur with Gore Vidal as he reflects on religiosity and says, “the moment you adopt the scriptures is the moment you relinquish sanity”.

Posted by Richard Davis on 29/09/06 at 04:09 PM

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION is alive and well in Australia. Every few months the press in Australia go hammer and tongs at the Bretheren- it is unrestrained, it is unrelentless, its a breach of their privacy, it is cruel and it is harrassment. They are a bit naive, but on the whole they are very, very peaceful people, they are pacifists historically then and now. If any other group ion society was hounded like the Exclusive Bretheren are there would be a furious uproar! And guess what! The Bretheren are great parents toatlly committed to raising healthy clever, satsified children. More parents should take a leaf out of their book! Look at what your own children read, look at what they watch, listen to their language, ask them if they have drug pushers at school. Bretheren children read pleasant books, they don’t swear and they use their spare time wisely. If you really want to change the world use your rhetoric to do something about vulnerable little children who are in truly repressive situations without access to health and social services, where there is no food, no love, no kindness, no safety from drugs, pimps and street life adn even hard labour. Its so much easier to sit on your butts adn complain about the Exclusive Christian Bretheren whom you really know nothing about, do you? All you can possibly know is hearsay. Well I have got to know some of these people and they are truly to be admired. There is more good to say than any book could hold. Let them go about their lives peacefully, that’s really all they want to do. Stop persecuting them! Go and do something about the wickedness in the world yourself - do some work for a charity, organise a toy drive, help some migrants, buy a well in Africa, but for pity’s sake stop carping on about the Bretheren!

Posted by rosie on 29/01/07 at 07:35 PM

All theistic religions are, by their very nature, fundamentally anti-human and even more anti-earth.

If you posit some super-entity, above logic, above ‘creation’, then ipso facto you denigrate all else, no matter how much charity you indulge in, and no matter how much you profess to love little children, good books and furry creatures.

That individual members of the Exclusive Brethren are decent people is totally beside the point. The same can, I am sure, be said about individual members of the Taliban, the SS, the Royal Family or even the Liberal Party.

If the EB are fair dinkum in their beliefs, this will at times lead to conflicts in which those beliefs must be upheld regardless of the consequences for family members, the democratic process, or anything else that gets in God’s way.

Posted by Justa Bloke on 30/01/07 at 10:25 AM

“The [brethren] are a bit naive, but on the whole they are very, very peaceful people”
Post #4

If the Brethren are so peaceful, why are they fanning the flames of hatred towards people who don’t fit their opinion of what is “normal”, Rosie?

I’ll be happy to let them “go about their lives peacefully” Rosie, when they stop jamming my letter-box full of their hate mail during election campaigns.

Hate mail is called hate mail for a reason you know Rosie and that’s the message their pamphlets delivered directly into my home last election - hate and fear.

How can they be so full of hate and yet “peaceful” at the same time?

The Brethren are just another weird Christian cult, led by hypocrites who behave at odds with their own “teachings”, defended by people who don’t seem to know what “peace” actually means.

Yours,
Jason Lovell

Posted by Jason Lovell on 30/01/07 at 10:44 AM

Well Rosie that would be all fine and well if the EBs adopted that approach themselves ...but as they want to play an arguably significant part in the election process and as they recieve govt funding for their schools then they are open to scrutiny.

I struggle to accept that many schools with disadvantaged children do not receive adequate fundng when they receive funding, and yet arguably if a state school was run under the same conditions i.e barring students from considerig higher education, no access to computers then it would be answerable to its funding.

As for the “get off your butt” line, what gives you the idea that the people who are not so fond of EBs are not doing good in the world ? I would be interested to see that argumented justified.

Posted by CRaig Woodfall on 30/01/07 at 12:35 PM

Seeing as we have apologists for the Exclusive Brethren and they feel agrieved at their treatment i would ask how thw world leader of his “sect” intervened personally to break up a family this year, telling a12 year old girl that she would lose her mother if she did not renounce her father.
Bruce Hales sydney based “elect vessel” I would suggest( “empty vessel” ) more apt ! of the separist cult- urged the girl to cease contact with the father,saying “your mother will not be able to accept you if you continue contact with him”
The church has since moved the girl her mother and brother 700 km,s away, he has not seen them since even though the family court has granted him joint gardianship with supposedly guaranteed weekly access.
A phsychologist, Louise Samway’s, said many in the family cort system did not understand the “ferocity of fear planted in these children” by sects such as these.
“They teach that people “outside” are condemned to hell,and if you want to be saved you are not allowed to associate with anyone outside the group. The use the expression “of the devil” mrs Samways said and from “a childs point of view, to be told to spend time with a parent who is of the devil is an extremely frightening prospect and definitely psychological abuse! If you undermine a parent to a child, saying the parent is of the devil, that is abuse, there is no doubt about it.
Now these “lovely people” get taxpayer concessions to exist, for me ! i,d ship the lot of them out of the country and seeing as they have come to T.T in order to further their cause, well i say bring it on ! i got plenty of more damning information about these individuals ! and as for the govt getting cosy with them, i find that extremely worrying !
d.d.
d.d.

Posted by DON DAVEY on 31/01/07 at 12:29 AM

Rosie I was going to suggest you buy some blinkers and some dark sunglasses, but I see you’re wearing both already.

Posted by Nigel Crisp on 31/01/07 at 07:03 PM

Rosie, I absolutely agree with your comments on African wells, access to healthcare and the support of children who suffer ‘real’ deprivation. The needs of these kids must not be overshaddowed by what is in global terms a tiny minority group - the Exclusive Brethren. But, your comment “They are a bit naive, but on the whole they are very, very peaceful people, they are pacifists historically then and now” in my opinion shows some misunderstanding of who they are, what they do and how they operate. They have caused huge amounts of hardship, suffering, suicide, trauma, financial loss, etc. to a lot of people. If you are a member and you agree to every single edict without question, you will probably be OK, unless you fall the wrong side of some political powerplay. But, if you question any of the rules you are likely to lose everything, your home, children, parents, job, friends, the lot. When all you know is an Exclusive Brethren life, the transition to life outside the group is a huge and painful leap. For many it is too much. My experience is not hearsay, but firsthand. Take care, Ruth.

Posted by Ruth Slater on 04/06/07 at 05:48 PM

ah, Rosie Rosie Rosie, If the Exclusive Bretheren are what you say, perhaps you should tell that to the students at a small Tasmanian Primary school I know first hand, who are subjected to their EB school mates being loaded into 4 wheel drives that pick them up at lunchtime, and remove them from eating with “non believers/commoners”, tell them also, that they are not allowed to encourage close friendships with them or invite them to their birthday parties or for a sleep over., nor give them a xmas card proudly made in class. Also tell them, that it is better not to have access to electronic and press media, because then they won’t know if a well in Africa is needed, or a fundraising activity is required to support a community or person down on their luck.
Better still, don’t tell them anything, ignorance is bliss ??? and for who Rosie?

Posted by Wally on 05/06/07 at 04:35 PM

All of the above is true of individuals in the EB. I am an escapee. All escapees I know were damaged and for us, finding a comfortable place in the real world has been extremely difficult. Fortunately I enjoyed a public education up to tertiary level and was therefore blessed with exposure to freedom of thought then and since.
It seems to me that religious schools exist primarily to quarantine their children from ideas that challenge their myths. That those myths cannot survive in the real world is a strong indication they are indeed myths.
They will say it is to protect children from drugs, violence and so on, and it does for a time, but at what cost?
Is not the exclusion of mainstream science in education the denial of a right, a corollary of the right of free speech? Religiously or politically controlled curricula is such a denial and amazingly, it is being supported by all levels of Australian government (as it is in every other society in the world).
Of course, parents have the right to teach their children whatever myths they choose to support, but why are we funding such divisive nonsense from the public purse?
Perhaps we should also ask if corporal punishment is still used in EB schools. After all, the faithful are advised that if they ‘spare the rod, they spoil the child’.
It was well and truly alive when I was a kid and I doubt if even the Good News Bible has edited out that little gem of advice from God.

Stafford Ray
Eden NSW

Posted by Stafford Ray on 11/06/07 at 04:49 PM

I personally have no truck with any thing dealing with the myth’s of Christianity and “creation” it is my belief that like “Santa”, “easter bunny” and the “tooth fairy” that we were supposed to eventually grow out of those beliefs , however to each his own.
It has to be noted however that whenever and wherever you have a large group of god’s people ! and especially of the likes of the “Brethren”, or “exclusive Brethren”, “Jehovah’s witness” etc ’ there also seems to be a predilection for strange behavior ! as if the “Catholics” haven’t been bad enough ! since the days of the ” Lucretia Borgia” and her clan !
A little tip ! the next time theres a knock on the door by “you know who ” answer the door in the buff and invite them in for a chat ! mind you, that only works if your a guy , i wouldn’t suggest a lady try that ploy !
then again ,if the mood predicts ? heh,heh.
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 12/06/07 at 03:24 AM

Rosie has got you compasionless technocrats beat. Each to their own, as DD says. Those quick to dismiss the value of religion are quickly dismissed in the mainstream debate. Like it or lump. it.

Posted by John Herbert on 12/06/07 at 04:58 PM

John Herbert, sadly the world is still filled with those enslaved to the violent mythical god called Yahweh and we see the results of that in all societies controlled by monotheism. There is not one country or society under the control of god, that is not in some form of violent external or internal conflict, censorship, suppression of women, freedoms and human rights. Just about all religiously controlled societies invoke the death penalty, suppress scientific and medical research, censor social and written expression. Name one faction of god that doesn’t place women below men.

Beliefs are fine, but forcefully imposing religious moralities, expressions and ideologies upon those who have evolved beyond the barbarity of a superstition infantile violent fantasy, is inexcusable in the extreme. All religion has brought to the world is constant growing violence, nothing else. There is not once piece of evidence that supports religion as being good, progressive or beneficial, other than to those who revel in violent suppressive control. A great example of that is the EB, who are barbaric and primitive.

Posted by stormbay on 13/06/07 at 10:45 AM

Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and Phillip Adams would get in line to disagree with you, John. You imply by the tenor of your post that there is (or should be) no debate as far as religion is concerned.

Those who have issued their concerns publicly over religion are very much part of the mainstream debate. Surely even you can admit that, deep down inside.

Posted by Cameron on 13/06/07 at 05:35 PM

The godless have no knowledge of god, obviously.

Posted by John Herbert on 14/06/07 at 11:16 AM

“The godless have no knowledge of god, obviously. “

John, the facts are less than .0001% of the followers of god have any knowledge of the true history and facts of their mythical god. Nothing outside their indoctrinated enslavement, to their plagiarised and verifiable false bibles. You have nothing to support your veracity, but violent destruction and failure, under the control of delusional fear.

There is not one positive outcome verifiable for the belief in god. You all follow the same god of Abraham, all constantly fight between yourselves for power. All factions use suppression, denial and finally violence, to enforce your delusions upon those who won’t bow down to you being right, about nothing.

Religion is a mental illness, ranging from mild insecurity, through to violent psychopathic actions and words. It’s a violent primitive superstition, steeped in fear and control. If it wasn’t so destructive in it’s expression, it would be just seen by the evolved o f the world, as infantile illusions.

Posted by stormbay on 14/06/07 at 07:40 PM

No, John, we don’t (17). That is, if the god you are on about is the construct being used by the managers of the monotheistic hordes to keep their sheep from straying. This religion thing lost all its value when men decided it was a good way of getting a following that they could lead. From then on it has all been power politics and has had nothing at all to do with any higher plane of existence.
The EB are just the latest in a long line of nutbags to get religion and politics confused, and John Howard is yet another nasty shitbag politician manipulating said nutbags for his own fascist ends. That you fail to understand this is sad, really.

Posted by Eagle eye on 14/06/07 at 09:38 PM

In the pathetic limitations of people’s combined intellects the debate rages. Dumbarse arrogance, duped religious dogmaticians, dead pan smiling fools, smooth talking charletons, huge stupidly clothed organisations, people writhing on the ground obviously possessed, shallow flaunters of momentary wealth, forgetters of those critical times, ignorers of pleas, thoughtless of those trying to claw back from death, mockers of beautifully spoken kind children who are not turned on to trend, condoners of selfish motive, happy believers of bits and pieces who have only glanced at the historic being of Jesus Christ and the words of way that are a reliant on an ear appropriately inclined even ever so slightly that a shaft of light may fertilise.

The reality of Jesus Son of God here on Earth a short while ago is more the issue than the religion that clearly predicted his coming and the need for it.

A life with God, only made possible through the torturous donation of Jesus’ body and dna as the key that turned, through flesh, death, spirit and heaven, to forge a stargate. The greatest moment in Earth’s short history and well documented it is.

Posted by cupboardbound on 14/06/07 at 10:16 PM

Very interesting use of the lower case ‘g’ in post 17, John.

If only it were so easy to divide the world’s population into easily discernible camps—the godless and the godful, to use always dubious logic.

Dichotomies are pointless, John.

Posted by Cameron on 15/06/07 at 05:45 PM

call me dumb, but i really am unsure of what post (20) is trying to say , anyone !
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 15/06/07 at 07:39 PM

Nature of God.

Someone must have made us?
Let’s call him God.

What does he look like?
Let’s make him like us.

Why do we need him?
Because we don’t understand.

What if I understand?
God will punish you.

What if he doesn’t exist?
His believers will punish you.

Posted by Stafford Ray on 15/06/07 at 08:12 PM

Hey stormbay, what do you believe?

Posted by Mark Hanna on 15/06/07 at 08:51 PM

Sorry 22 ... I’ll butt out.

Posted by Cupboardbound on 17/06/07 at 12:22 PM

It’s me back again, but not with a comment of my own. Somebody just emailed this to me and i thought irt may be of interest.

“This is very interesting and just a bit scary ...

The Muslim religion is the fastest growing religion per capita in the United States , especially in the minority races!!!

Allah or The Lord Jesus Christ? ... By Rick Mathes

Last month I attended my annual training session that’s required for maintaining my state prison security clearance. During the training session there was a presentation by three speakers representing the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Muslim faiths, who explained each of their beliefs.

I was particularly interested in what the Islamic Imam had to say. The Imam gave a great presentation of the basics of Islam, complete with a video.

After the presentations, time was provided for questions and answers.

When it was my turn, I directed my question to the Imam and asked: “Please, correct me if I’m wrong, but I understand that most Imams and clerics of Islam have declared a holy jihad [Holy war] against the infidels of the world and, that by killing an infidel, (which is a command to all Muslims) they are assured of a place in heaven. If that’s the case, can you give me the definition of an infidel?”

There was no disagreement with my statements and, without hesitation, he replied, “Non-believers! “

I responded, “So, let me make sure I have this straight. All followers of Allah have been commanded to kill everyone who is not of your faith so they can have a place in heaven. Is that correct?”

The expression on his face changed from one of authority and command to that of “a little boy who had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.”

He sheepishly replied, “Yes.”

I then stated, “Well, sir , I have a real problem trying to imagine Pope John Paul commanding all Catholics to kill those of your faith or Dr. Stanley ordering all Protestants to do the same in order to guarantee them a place in heaven!”

The Imam was speechless!

I continued, “I also have problem with being your ‘friend’ when you and your brother clerics are telling your followers to kill me! Let me ask you a question. Would you rather have your Allah, who tells you to kill me in order for you to go to heaven, or my Jesus who tells me to love you because I am going to heaven and He wants you to be there with me?”

You could have heard a pin drop as the Imam hung his head in shame. Needless to say, the organizers and/or promoters of the ‘Diversification’ training seminar were Not happy with Rick’s way of dealing with the Islamic Imam and exposing the truth about the Muslims’ beliefs.

In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. To elect the President! I think everyone in the U.S. should be required to read this, but with the Liberal justice system, liberal media and the ACLU, there is no way this will be widely publicized.

This is a true story and the author, Rick Mathes, is a well-known leader in prison ministry. ”

Posted by Cupboardbound on 18/06/07 at 07:22 PM

(26)
C.B. This is pretty heavy stuff and should be widely understood ! have you actually sent this to the newspapers or say media watch , John Laws, 60 minutes, or anyone else because such beliefs and or actions need to be stopped in their tracks .

I personally find it hard to believe that the U.S.A ,Australia or any other country allows the migration into our societies by ANYONE professing to be a member of such a religion with those beliefs, as if for instance, i threaten my neighbor , or any individual with an act of violence or threaten to kill them , is this not similar and tantamount to threatening behavior ? for which there must be some lawful consequence!

This is quite a serious issue, if it has a basis in fact ! and deserves vigorous debate by all as we now live in very dangerous times and should not let apathy dull our senses.
Good call ! c.b.
D.D.

Posted by don davey on 19/06/07 at 05:06 AM

(26)
C.B.
Once again ,i was so incensed by that post that i have forwarded it on to over 35 newspapers around the country , because these views should be required information for the general public (Australia wide ) to make comment upon and to further lobby their elected members as to their concerns.
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 19/06/07 at 05:28 AM

I raised this matter with my family who are well informed in this field. They were not happy that I had moved into publication; as the all exclaimed that Muslims by and large do not adher to this aspect of the koran.

I am myslf aware of this. They may be bad Muslims as ossama indicated that Sudamm was. The majority of christians are bad similarly. They dont adher.

SO SURE THIS AN INDICATOR OF UNDESIRABLE CIRCUMSTANCE, BUT ONLY ON THE EXTREME FRONT ... AND THIS IS THE TERRORISM FACTOR.

MOST MUSLIMS ARE NO MORE LIKELY TO CUT YOUR THROAT THAN ANYBODY ELSE IN THE STREET INCLUDING YOURSELF.

MOST MUSLIMS ARE KIND AND RESPONSIBLE ENOUGH TO TO WORSHIP WHAT THEY PREFER TO THINK OF AS A PEACEFUL GOD.

Can you please forward this DD to those papers.
Hopefully by and large this is a little bit of sensationalism that comes out of the christian right in the east coast of the usa.

LOVE YOUR LOCAL MUSLIM .... and Jesus said “Love your enemy” ... but chances are very likely that your local Muslim is a nice guy.

Posted by Cupboardbound on 19/06/07 at 09:40 AM

Jesus Don! Have you ever met any muslims or been to a muslim country? Big surprise for you here - they’re not all slavering for Western blood. I think you should pop into your local mosque (actually, I am not sure there is one in white-bread Lonnie, but you could drop down to Hobart, I recall it is in Warwick St) and ask them about their plans for world domination. I would suggest that you dont take the word of one set of evangelical god-botherers over another.

Posted by Tomas on 19/06/07 at 09:54 AM

Cupboardbounds post has appeared on many religious and USA sites over the last year or so that I have noticed them. Rick Mathes is a well known right wing religious zealot with little real credibility,except within his own mind. It’s irrelevant as to what faction of god you follow, they are all the same when you get down to the nuts and bolts of their beliefs, barbaric and unevolved.

There are many examples of all leaders of religious factions demeaning the death of non believers throughout monotheistic history. I good example of christian efforts to kill non believers, is the indigenous peoples of the world. Just a quick look at the Spanish example in Sth America during their invasion and the current USA middle east crusade is another.

Mark Hanna, I did reply to your question, but it seems either I didn’t submit it properly or it got lost or was deleted. To answer you, I believe in the future and the potential it holds for us. I have no need for the primitive superstition of a mythical god, that’s for the infantile, unevolved and psychologically inept.

Posted by stormbay on 19/06/07 at 10:24 AM

In regard to comments (26) to (28) it may be of interest to read the following item:

In my limited experience I consider any claims made in chain emails to be dubious and like to research the origins of such emails. If you believe the contents of these emails and forward to others without undertaking some research then you are likely to believe almost anything you are told!

Chain emails tend to reflect negatively on the credibility of the sender.

Posted by Bert Norton on 19/06/07 at 12:23 PM

I have since talked to someone familiar with the Koran who states that yes ! that it is true, the issues stated in post 26 are correct , and if this be so and the individual states that he does not believe in the practice’s put forward by his “Iman” or “mufti” then, should they not quit the faith forthwith !
For those who believe my anger was a knee jerk reaction , allow me to echo the paragraph where the author puts the scenario as to what if a “Catholic priest” or “Protestant leader” were to advocate that their followers seek out and kill those not of that faith, i believe that most Catholics, or Protestants would Quit those faiths “en masse” not withstanding, the public outcry !
The Islamic faith is rapidly growing worldwide,and we have already been subjected to outrageous statements by the Sydney based “Mufti” on many occasions , with his incoming replacement stating that he was misunderstood and or taken out of context , furthermore add this to the behavior of the young of that faith in the Sydney suburbs ! well ! i believe we ignore such behavior at our peril.
d.d.

Well located, Bert. Every time I read this stuff (26) my BS alarm goes off. Real life conversations just don’t run like that. Can’t they get better script writers; “So, let me make sure I have this straight…”. for once I’m totally (I’m often partially!) in agreeance (is that right?) with Tomas.

Posted by Steve on 19/06/07 at 09:42 PM

(32)

Islam or Christ ! this is exactly the problem ! it always has to be one or the other ! according to Gods people ! as in ! Ireland “protestant or catholic ? ”
Since man stopped scraping his knuckles it seems that, THAT choice has had to be answered ! and what has it given us ? man’s inhumanity to the other, constant war ! all in the cause of a myth.
Do i know any Muslims ? asks Tomas ,whom i seldom wish to respond to, but in answer, no i don’t ! however i have friends in Sydney and have been visited upon many times with stories of “Bloody Lebs” (to use their words) and those of the Muslim faith , and yes we should take individuals as we find them , however just who are the perpetrators of 7/11 and what can be made of a woman who having just lost a son as a suicide bomber states emphatically that she can,t wait for the baby on her hip to reach the age when he can also do Allah’s bidding !
That kind of indoctrination is endemic and can not be stopped , so why allow those who subscribe to a faith that encourages such behavior in to this country ? and if that sounds racist so be it! I don’t give a rat’s arse , it’s my opinion and i’m entitled to it.
It is way past the time of kowtowing to “political correctness” and bending over backwards in order to placate out of step minority groups and especially those of religious leanings, we need to take back our society.

D.D.

Posted by don davey on 19/06/07 at 11:10 PM

Hi Don - I actually agree with you on a few aspects there. Certainly there is a danger that various ethnic-based subcultures can breed significant anti-social behaviour. But this isn’t reserved just for the ethnics, if you look around at other nasty little subcultures. Most muslims, jews, christians and atheists just want to live their lives, love and support their kids and have a safe home. I would suggest try a trip to Indonesia, Malaysia and the UAE to see more moderate muslims ‘at home’. Sure, the Islamists are causing carnage around the world in pursuit of the caliphate, but I think all this emphasises the evil that is zealotary in all its guises.

The troubling aspects of the Qu’ran are mirrored in the hateful aspects of the Old Testament, it just becomes an issue when the idiots take it as dogma. The Qu’ran and Sunnah are also rather contradictory tomes as there are many parts advising on peaceful co-existance with the ‘unbelievers’ as well and the sin of violence. As usual, the extremist would always take up only the bits that correspond to their world view. What we should be doing is looking at how disaffection and cultism leads to extremism and zealotary.

Posted by Tomas on 20/06/07 at 10:43 AM

Don, I wonder when you see an expose of some white fascist group representing WASP interests, do you think, leave my brothers alone!!! The point is, there are extremists throughout all societies who believe in their ideology, which also means they believe in violently deposing of opposition. As equally as taking something out of the Koran to justify Islamphobia, (those extremists hark back to the Crusades as their justification of their belief in killing infidels) all religons threaten the non believers with hell or damnation, or coming back as a worm or whatever. When you speak of society, so do the majority of Muslims, speak of the same respectful place of peace and harmony for all people.
Christian extremists who kill doctors and others who are involved in safe legal abortions, are not embraced by the mainstream christian church, as equally as these radical muffins are not by the majority of ordianry muslim people.
What scares me more than Islamic extremist attacks on innocent people, is the ongoing genocide in Darfur, which seems to immobilise the west, yet supposed WMD’s in Iraq are enough for regime change. A lot of WMD’s actively kill innocent people all over the world, daily, sometimes in the name of democracy. That’s freaky, given so much of capitalist economy depends on manafacture, supply and utilisation of armanents and weapons for killing people.
There are christian groups out there, burying caches of weapons to kill the enemy when it is time. Their enemy is anyone who isn’t them. What’s the difference? Are you as equally afraid of them, but without the racism?

Posted by Laurene Kelly on 20/06/07 at 02:14 PM

(38) LAURENE,
first i,m too goddamn old and cranky to be afraid of anything anymore, 2. you! as do most this place , dissect and pick what particular aspect of the oppositions debate that suits your need and conveniently attack ,ignoring the statement as a whole !
You post preaches to the converted and it tells me nothing i am not aware of , the one MAIN point i make is , regardless of the crap that i am well aware of that appears in the bible etc , for the MOST part ! much is taken with a pinch of salt, in other words MOST people realize the words were written by individuals during the awakening of mans intelligence and IN THE MAIN ! todays leaders do not push those lines ,unless of course you live in the U.S.A,s bible belt ! but on appearances, as with the Sydney experience with the “Mufti” ! the Islamic leaders do EXACTLY THAT and take the teachings literally !
That ! and only that ! is my beef, everyone can worship Paris Goddamn Hilton as far as I’m concerned as long as they don’t inflame and condone violence, and he (the mufti) and those who wish to follow ,then let them follow him back to wherever he was spawned.
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 20/06/07 at 05:42 PM

One thing I find troubling among all this to-and-fro is that there is very little here to answer what it is that causes demonic possession and how it is resolved.

I also find that science, partly due to the iniquities of people (professional gains) is variously corrupt and walks on spindly legs like a Dali elephant. In fact it is no more than an object within mystery.

Further, and I really dont have time from my daily grind, I am very impressed with the veins of gold that run through the times of the Bible compilation that are prophecy and prophecy-fulfillment.

And further I have issue with people who consider themselves to be good and therefor innocent and invulnerable to a sour afterlife. .... I most certainly expect an afterlife. It takes only the slightest transendant experience or awareness of the congenital attractions of mind to confirm this. There is something happening and you dont know what it is ... do you Mr Jones? The questioner knows and in compassion asks. The ask causes maddening frustration in many. The person with the answers for the questioned is neither the asker nor the questioned, nor any other mortal. The person with the answers is not the Father in heaven but Jesus the son who is the only link we have to God.
... those ‘antisocial’ words in the bible can be answered by the big Nugget in the biblical veins.
Perhaps somebody else can help with this.

Posted by Flounder on 21/06/07 at 10:11 AM

Don, I don’t like being disagreeable, but George W Bush said that God had told him to go to war with Iraq, and if you remember in those early days, his war was with Islam in the language he used in calling it a ‘crusade’. It didn’t take long for the spinners to spin this out of his rhetoric. A lot of commentators agree that the White House was like a revivalist meeting, and to win elections, mobilising fundamentalist christians was a key part of achieving greater voter registration.
We agree on the ridiculous mufti from sydney with the ancient tongue, but many in the Muslim community spoke out saying he didn’t represent them, as the Muslim community is diverse in its ethnicity. My take is the press want you to believe he is representative by using him, and that it fits the bigger agenda of be afraid, very afraid, alert and alarmed. That’s all.

Posted by Laurene Kelly on 21/06/07 at 11:50 AM

Holy shit ! I gotta take a reality check ! have i read right ! the great Tomasino has agreed with some of my ravings ,i think now for the second time! surely i’ve erred somewhere !
now let’s see ! Naaaaaaaah ! can’t see anything ! maybe he’s seen the light. hallelujah !
d.d.

By the way the todays examiner state’s there were 1000 at last nights excellent rally ! BULLSHIT ! i was upstairs and did a head count with another gent and we estimated 2 thousand definitely ! , give or take a 100. that is w1thout staff, also for we “uninformed” there was not one single timber lobby or Gunn,s representitive, so consequently absolute agreement to all proposals with no abstainers.
Bastards never get it right do they ?

Posted by don davey on 21/06/07 at 04:12 PM

Don - short memory!! I also agreed with you on the Hicks issue and that Costello would be a decent and progressive leader of the Libs, if given a chance. I only partially agree with you on the danger of subversive subcultures bent on the destruction of Western democracies.

Posted by Tomas on 21/06/07 at 09:09 PM

those ‘constructs’ referred to in some of these posts are ‘graven images’ ... all of them.

Posted by Flounder on 22/06/07 at 10:12 PM

Ok ! Tomas,
your working your way back into my good books , i may even lower myself to respond to you on the proviso that you start acting like the professional you so often tell us you are !

(41)
Laurene, i am getting on and my hearing aint what it once was ! however the Mufti said what he said there is no doubt and you are correct a small minority disagreed with his views but even they wouldn’t go so far as to say he should stand down!
There is no place for his kind or any one subscribing to his teachings anywhere in the world as for reasons i will never understand there will always be individuals who will align themselves with radicals, e.g. Manson, Karesh, Hitler,Jim Jones,Billy Graham,Garner Ted Armstrong, I won,t bore you with any more , ah ! bugger it ! the Pope,George Pell, the…..........................

d.d.

Posted by dondavey on 22/06/07 at 11:36 PM

Re:2 “Considering there’s no archaeological, historical or verifiable evidence for the veracity of either bible, you can understand the barbarity of its followers attempts to enforce their illusions. Its an accept psychopathic approach.”

In respect to stormbay’s comments, I thought I would mention the following:

There are many extra-biblical writings for the period after the NT that historians generally accept are genuine. for instance, Josephis (War) - the earliest available document that is available today was copied 900 to 1200 years after the period it refers to. Pliny (Letters) 725-750 years.

What about archeology relating to OT times?

The discovery of the Ebla archive in northern Syria in the 1970s has shown the Biblical writings concerning the Patriarchs to be viable. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place names in the Patriarchal accounts are genuine. The name “Canaan” was in use in Ebla, a name critics once said was not used at that time and was used incorrectly in the early chapters of the Bible. The word “tehom” (“the deep”) in Genesis 1:2 was said to be a late word demonstrating the late writing of the creation story. “Tehom” was part of the vocabulary at Ebla, in use some 800 years before Moses. Ancient customs reflected in the stories of the Patriarchs have also been found in clay tablets from Nuzi and Mari.

The Hittites were once thought to be a Biblical legend, until their capital and records were discovered at Bogazkoy, Turkey.

Many thought the Biblical references to Solomon’s wealth were greatly exaggerated. Recovered records from the past show that wealth in antiquity was concentrated with the king and Solomon’s prosperity was entirely feasible.

It was once claimed there was no Assyrian king named Sargon as recorded in Isaiah 20:1, because this name was not known in any other record. Then, Sargon’s palace was discovered in Khorsabad, Iraq. The very event mentioned in Isaiah 20, his capture of Ashdod, was recorded on the palace walls. What is more, fragments of a stela memorializing the victory were found at Ashdod itself.

Another king who was in doubt was Belshazzar, king of Babylon, named in Daniel 5. The last king of Babylon was Nabonidus according to recorded history. Tablets were found showing that Belshazzar was Nabonidus’ son who served as coregent in Babylon. Thus, Belshazzar could offer to make Daniel “third highest ruler in the kingdom” (Dan. 5:16) for reading the handwriting on the wall, the highest available position. Here we see the “eye-witness” nature of the Biblical record, as is so often brought out by the discoveries of archaeology.

Another area of evidence is the confirmation of fulfilled prophecy.

In Isaiah 44:28 & Isaiah 45:1, god speaks of Cyrus (King of Persia). At the time of this writing - Cyrus was not yet born.

In the OT, there are many prophecies relating to Jesus that were fulfilled during the time that he was on the earth.

Relating to the present day, there are also prophecies that clearly are being fulfilled now. For instance, the OT prophecies regarding the return of the Jewish people to Israel in the last days.

Question - how many ancient civilisations have been raised up today virtually from nothing?

Posted by Ross Petersen on 24/06/07 at 05:40 AM

Re: (6) - “I’ll be happy to let them “go about their lives peacefully” Rosie, when they stop jamming my letter-box full of their hate mail during election campaigns.”

I cannot remember exactly what the EB said in their pamphlets, but as I recall it, what they said was actually true.

Now whether or not a person agrees with them, the reality is that their claims were verifiably true.

Actually true? Verifiably true, Ross? Provide verifiable proof of this, please. Otherwise I will have no choice but to align your comments where I suspect they belong—very much in the margins of an otherwise rational debate.

Posted by Cameron on 24/06/07 at 02:12 PM

That’s what I reckon 47. Dig around in that dirt long enough and youre sure to find the big Nugget.
Noahs Ark is a bit of a challenge but the big Nugget has already been found.

Posted by Flounder on 24/06/07 at 02:57 PM

Re 46: What the EB said in their pamphlets was demonstrably false. They were wrong about the Greens’ drug policy. The pamphlets were certainly also homophobic.

Posted by Justa Bloke on 24/06/07 at 08:18 PM

# 47 Ross Peterson, you’ve said nothing that provides any evidence for the veracity of either bibles. Anyone can write a book using references from the past, it doesn’t make what is written factual. Plus there is no verifiable evidence for Jesus ever existing, no verifiable eye witness accounts nor any historical, or archaeological evidence to support his existence. Josephus, never met him and relies on hearsay, Just as Paul does, plus the only reference Josephus used, was placed in his writing many years later.

As for the Elba archives, they virtually prove the OT is a plagiarised document, using Sumerian stories like the “Epic of Gilgamesh” to create their fantasy stories. The creation theory was around for thousands of years before the OT came about in many mythologies. You say these things are viable according to these ancient accounts, but being viable as opposed to truth is totally different. Solomon, give me a break, again all available evidence states otherwise. Relying on hope and delusion, is why the belief in Yahweh is so destructive and a suppressive evil.

In the 3500 years of the worship of Yahweh, there has not been one positive outcome for the world, just ongoing and growing religious violence, war, destruction and debauchery. The only way it has survived is by forced suppression of people and knowledge, a perfect example of that is the EB’s, other zealot factions and the situation of indigenous peoples of the world since they were violently forced into becoming enslaved to yahweh the god of war. Now that time is over and truth is there for all to see. So like all things that don’t evolve, those following the mythical superstition of god, are passed their use by date and on their death throes, as can be seen around the world. Sadly like all desperately fearful, they are trying to destroy everything and anyone who will not bow down to their suppressive infantile and primitive regimes. All factions of yahweh are fighting each other to prove who is right in their following of the same god, which just goes to show how insane they and the belief in god is. When you believe in a pack of lies, then your entire life is a lie and we see that in the actions, operations and outcomes of the EB’s approach to life. Nothing in their pamphlets was true, except if you take into account the depth of their delusional and fearfully suppressive bizarre moral stances.

Posted by stormbay on 26/06/07 at 03:35 PM

Re: Plus there is no verifiable evidence for Jesus ever existing, no verifiable eye witness accounts nor any historical, or archaeological evidence to support his existence. Josephus, never met him and relies on hearsay, Just as Paul does, plus the only reference Josephus used, was placed in his writing many years later.
No doubt, stormbay you would be aware that there are many ancient documents (not necessarily biblical) that historians have today.
Without going into any detail about what they said, here is a list of writers in NT times that referred to Jesus Christ (note that these are non-biblical):

Now, many of these writers were not Christian and indeed it is easy to see that they were often critical of Christianity. Yet not one of them denied that Jesus Christ was a real person.
Legends typically require a significant period of time to develop and gain credibility. In this case, within just twenty years of Jesus’ death, Christian doctrine, conviction, churches, creeds, martyrs, and sermons—every one unequivocally confessing Jesus as Lord—can all be handily documented.
It is a matter of historical fact that the early church underwent severe persecution for their faith. For instance, Peter was crucified supposedly upside down. Now if there was anybody who knew the truth about Jesus it was his disciples. Would they have been willing to die for the sake of a cause that they knew was a lie? I don’t think so.
The Epic of Gilgamesh speaks in part of a great flood. Did you know that around the world in various civilizations there are many “flood legends”. If all these civilizations (below) have a common thread, it tends to support the view that there was a great flood.
Babylon- Berossus’ account
Babylon- Gilgamesh epic
Bolivia- Chiriguano
Borneo- Sea Dayak
Burma- Singpho
Canada- Cree
Canada- Montagnais
China- Lolo
Cuba- original natives
East Africa- Masai
Egypt- Book of the Dead
Fiji- Walavu-levu tradition
French Polynesia- Raiatea
Greece- Lucian’s account
Guyana- Macushi
Iceland- Eddas
India- Andaman Islands
India- Bhil
India-Kamar
Iran- Zend-Avesta
Italy- Ovid’s poetry
Malay Peninsula- Jekun
Mexico- Codex Chimalpopoca
Mexico- Huichol
New Zealand- Maori
Peru- Indians of Huarochiri
X . Russia- Vogul
U.S.A. (Alaska)- Kolusches
U.S.A. (Alaska)- Tlingit
U.S.A. (Arizona)- Papago
U.S.A. (Hawaii)- legend of Nu-u
Vanualu- Melanesians
Vietnam- Bahnar
Wales- Dwyfan/Dwyfan legend

Posted by Ross Petersen on 30/06/07 at 09:19 AM

Plenty of fuel for the Biblical fire there 55. We may now see some water from the sceptic. To and fro for centuries upon centuries. Sometimes with words and jokes sometimes with bullets into folks.

Why is it that the statements from one man have this effect? And yes I see, we might ask why it is that at least one, other than that man himself, ventured support to the man to the point of crucifixion.

The sceptic can say that there’s plenty of hypermanic death-defying pursuits about people. Many of which conflict with each other and thereby prove one or the other to be stupid.

I have never seen a sound argument, though I have seen some go momentarily close, to blast the nugget of gold out of the Bible. There was a time when it would put me to sleep and perhaps now’s a time for the flounder to come out of the cupboard, for the world is on a brink and there are many who need the knowledge ... but then again, while there are scholars like yourself, the life of a flounder is nice and quiet.

I lie here thinking, “what would the biblisceptics do if it wasnt there to grind their axes?”

“I imagine there’s no heaven and so on. Then I see them eventually facing their own foibles, brought about by heaven-knows-what, and cracking at their seams they notice a ray of light from some eastern star, and recall some words that forcaste its arrival - a ray of words.”

Come on sceptics, I broke on through, break on through to the other side. That little baby person has been both alive and dead and alive again. He must have more clues than us. one has to admit he may not have been lieing when he said he was/is the son of God. If he was lieing he’d be a fool. He wasnt a fool; that is confimed. That he said it is also confirmed .... and not something that any latent scribe would forget nor something that would not carry down the generations by mouth and genetic memory.

Posted by Flounder on 30/06/07 at 01:39 PM

Ross Petersen, it must have taken you a long time to find all that. But again, your only trying to distort and change the facts to support your delusions. The earliest know NT writings can only be verified to at least 70 years after the event, not 20 and most others were written more than 100 years after the supposed events. Plus the only originals they have, were written 300 years later by scribes writing from copies of many copies . All the events you put up for the flood, only show that there are and have been floods around the world, which we see every day, somewhere on our planet. Considering you can’t provide the chronology for your supposition, it’s just like the rest of your argument, supposition, hearsay and illusional lies. Then you have to provide evidence for where the water to cover the earth, higher than mount Everest, came from and went. And what happened to all the indigenous people not on the ark and all the invertebrate, reptiles, millions of different varieties and species that inhabit the earth. If you believe they were all on the ark, how did they get to it, what about the massive amount and variety of bird life that couldn’t land. According to the size of the ark in the bible, it couldn’t have possibly carried all those living things and where did the huge variety of food come from to feed them and remove their waste. How do they feed Koala’s, who only eat a certain type of fresh gum leaves. Still when you live a lie, all you have is lies to support it.

All the earlier writers you have stated as being proof of they having known Jesus, have been archaeologically and anthropologically debunked as deceptions. Typical of those following the god of war, which by the way has constantly waged religious war since it’s inception. I suppose you deny the glaring similarities of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of jesus, written more than a 1000 years before. Plus the Greek influence on the Abrahamic tribe, who were Egyptians and took Greek and Egyptian mythology, changing it for their own use, more lies. Then we have the obviously plagiarised OT with much of it coming from Egyptian mythology, the Vedic texts and again, the Gilgamesh.

Flounder says he hasn’t seen a serious argument to deny the bible, yet the truth is, there is not one serious or verifiable argument or any proof, for either bibles veracity. Then you negated to provide some verifiable evidence that the belief in yahweh has brought anything positive to the world, but much to show it has brought nothing but death, genocide, ongoing war and destruction to every corner of the world it’s been forcibly introduced. Every country controlled by gods followers, are suppressive, at war or internal conflict. Even the god fearing USA, has the highest crime rates in the western world, indulges in executions illegal invasions and war like destructions. You have nothing verifiable, that provides evidence for a loving caring god, or even for it’s existence. The OT is filled with murder, rape, genocide, incest, war, destruction, all carried out by your god, in the name of your god, or under instructions from your god, yahweh the god of war. The NT is filled with blood lust, ridiculous delusions and ends with more war and destruction in the name of your god.

But your entitled to live a primitive, infantile superstition, sadly for the last 3500 years people supporting these lies have carried out every debauchery they can conceive, in an attempt to force the lie as being real. Now we have a world engulfed with religious war, as the various factions and cults of Yahweh, fight each other trying to prove their version of god is right and loving. This is truly bizarre and psychopathic behaviour, that you can only expect from those still to unevolved enough to see beyond their fearful illusions that control their minds. Basically all who follow god, are guilty by association, for all the ongoing debauchery carried out in Yahweh’s name. But considering they live in the depths of denial, they will deny any involvement and blame someone or something else. I get a laugh at those who fervently support this despotic belief, yet really have never studied it’s verifiable origins and recorded history.

Posted by stormbay on 01/07/07 at 11:27 AM

So who decided what bits of writing went into the Bible? What were their qualifications? When they chose, what were their criteria? How wide was the range from which they chose? How did they know that no more relevant texts would be discovered (eg the Book of Mormon, Playboy for June 1972, Noddy’s Adventures in K-Mart)?

Posted by Justa Bloke on 02/07/07 at 05:16 PM

just for the record, when God made man - SHE was only joking.

Posted by helen kempton on 04/07/07 at 12:54 PM

WO-MAN ... with man; what a privelege. The question remains as to is there a Mrs God. But methinx gender is not a mandatory condition for a holy being. The language of the scriptures of course must be a sort of pigeon-godspeak.

Posted by Flounder on 11/07/07 at 09:13 AM

StormBay I gotta tip a flipper at ya; you’ve had a look deeply into stuff. However, i’m suspicious that you’ve gone in with bias and built a fat elephant on spindly legs. Equally Ross Petersen may seem to have done so too.

StormBay tell me what you think about spirits and possession by spirits.

Posted by Flounder on 11/07/07 at 02:16 PM

Just for the record. You have to judge a supposed follower of Jesus Christ by what they do, rather than what they say, in my opinion. Don’t saddle Him with those who claim to follow Him and kill. He spoke against all that. Who could deny that the sermon on the mount in Matthew chaps 5,6 & 7 is not a prescription for a peace loving life?
As for those writing before this contribution who are criticising the Bible writings, it seems to me that you are filled with anger and hatred towards God and won’t be persuaded against your will anyway.
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 11/07/07 at 02:47 PM

Tell me StormBay, if there happened to be a huge international battle centred against Israel on the plains of Armageddon in the Middle East, what would be your comment on the scriptural prophecies to that effect?

flownderpower (poundaflour)
(bottleinfronto’me - frontal lobotome)

Posted by Flounder on 12/07/07 at 03:55 PM

just a fine point Stormy; you’re part of a growing troop who tend write ‘your’ when they mean ‘you’re’. And like Annie Warburton it frustrates me ... not that Annie herself does.

Posted by Flounder on 12/07/07 at 04:04 PM

Hey, Ozziepa, I hope you don’t think I was ‘criticising the Bible writings’. I reckon it’s an OK read. But I really do want answers to (at least the serious bits of) my questions in post 58.

By the way, if those who claim to be Christians but kill (or support killing) aren’t included, it shrinks to a tiny little sect.

Posted by Justa Bloke on 12/07/07 at 04:55 PM

Justa,
You’d have to be omniscient to know how many christians there are. And being as you don’t attend places they gather at, how would you confidently say they are only a tiny sect.
It sounds compelling, like much of what you say, but can we trust your judgement on this.
The church I attned has 500 attending regularly, most of whom are youth (unlike me). Their sincerity is seen in their work among the homeless, drug addicted (running a program called ‘drug proofing your kids’, work among orpans in Africa, Thailand & other places.
I mean, how could you comment on something that you appear to be against without doing proper scientific research?
Again, I have nothing against you, only taking issue with some of what you are saying.
Regards
Ozzipa

Posted by Ozziepa on 13/07/07 at 10:23 AM

Flounder, I don’t believe facts are spindly legs. Yes I have delved into monotheism deeply, being brought up in a religious family, I needed to know the real truth. Much of what I was told, was not the same as what I observed and forced to read. There’s absolutely no verifiable evidence to support either bible, or the koran. All the evidence shows them to be plagiarised from earlier works, or made up from folk law. The story of Jesus, virgin birth etc, comes from Sumerian mythology. His sayings can be found within earlier Sumerian, Greek, Hindu and Buddhist texts. Its an adapted middle east folk story and enhanced by the texts I’ve stated above and probably many more. Many people seem to think everything comes from the middle east, yet the silk route through Asia was around hundreds, even thousands of years before the Jesus story and many stories were passed along it.

I understand possession, there are many things that can appear to be unexplainable, yet end up with quite rational explanations. Many boil down to superstition, fear and a primitive mentality that convinces someone they are possessed by something. The power of the mind and group hysteria, are yet to be fathomed out, so, many things are yet to be understood. You just have to look at world wide religion to see how bizarre and ridiculous it is, none of them actually practise what they preach, or believe. The current state of the world is ample evidence for that, yet the religious present themselves as holier than thou and right, against the evidence of their own reality. Its a con job, purely for the gullible unevolved who can’t and won’t take responsibility for their lives, yet are happy to destroy anyone else, to maintain there hypocritical ignorance. The EB is a perfect example of the insanity of this belief.

As to spirits, I don’t know. There may be other dimensional beings we don’t see that have certain effects in this dimension, but if they were really as people make them out to be, there would be verifiable evidence everywhere, even if it couldn’t be scientifically explained. As to “your” and “you’re”, along with other spelling. Since getting involved in forums, I’ve found the standard of spelling and grammar can be abominable and I’ve tried to live with it falling into the trap of not changing some of these things. I believe anyone, irrelevant as to their grasp of proper English grammar or spelling, should be afforded their right to express in the way that’s comfortable for them as long as it makes sense and isn’t abusive. Any other approach is just elitist and a form of discrimination and I understand that very well. When you look at what comes out of our education system today, what else can you expect.

There have been many large monotheistic battles in the middle east since Yahweh’s inception, all in their time frame would be classed as huge and international. Two thousand years ago, international would have included one or two countries, now it can include many more. There would be very little difference per capita, in the chronology.

Ozziepa, I see double standards in what you are saying. On one hand, people advocate criminally charging those who voice or provide material support for organisations, religious factions or cults that cause havoc. Yet on the other they’re quite prepared to support financially, religious organisations that continue to create havoc and destruction to all the indigenous of the planet by gods followers. Then the religious denounce anyone following god that doesn’t fit to their criteria of acceptable destruction. When you support and live the lie called religion, then you excuse the barbarity of forced conversions and the ongoing barbarity of your particular faction. Your entire life is a lie and your credibility diminishes into nothing. Guilty by association are all who follow god, they are all psychological terrorists, dealing in lies, deceit and subterfuge.

Posted by stormbay on 13/07/07 at 11:15 AM

Stormbay it seems like Ross and others are wasting their time trying to refute your claims with evidence (which by the way you fail to put forward in support of what you claim ie who says it was up until 70 yrs after the event that the earliest christian writings appeared. My understanding is that I Thessalonians was written by Paul in mid Ad 40’s, ie less than 10 years after Christ’s crucifixion.
When Ross goes to the trouble of putting forward the evidence you simply dismiss it with ‘must have taken you a long time to find all that.’ as if there’s a joke in him being so diligent in replying to your comments.
To my mind, you fit the old adage’a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still’ ie You will not change your beliefs even if evidence to the contrary is produced.
However, you may be on a sincere quest for truth?
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 13/07/07 at 08:59 PM

You blow a strong breeze Stormy. I have seen some hurricane strength winds telling me that Darwin’s ‘theory’ is now blown away. Electron microscopes show that the stuff of our cells is more than primeaval goo and in fact includes a vast variety of tiny incredible machines that serve every function of our body. They form factories that manufacture protein etc. The machines are very simple and in no way have a single purpose without the whole that they contribute to. These cannot be evolved from bio-chemistry. so much of ‘science’ has been based on Darwin’s ‘theory’ - a spindly leg. Climate change; some have fingers crossed in favour some against - media democracy sets a theme ideas wrap and a new axiom is formed around another human foible - spindly. Peoples dishonesty fabricates bad theory, politics, proofs etc - enough spindlies for a centipede.

There’ll be a big, big battle on the plains of Armageddon,surer than Darwin’s story anyway.

Is your family history catholic, muslim, boogoo or what?

All these silk road myths and lives happened and are happening blending like oil on the water of the order of what is - including universal intelligence and extra-spatial consciousness.

Posted by Flounder on 15/07/07 at 10:30 AM

Oh, how we attend great lengths to argue our beliefs or the lack of them! So many approaches to the spirituality of mankind, so polarizing, so full of destruction. And to where does it all lead?? Ayre’s Rock would be far easier to toss aside!

What organization, culture, state, society, group, has not got or at some time been influenced by corruption, greed or even to the outright genocidal acts that man is capable of?

If this (Sin) is latent within mankind, then is that not where our focus should be? Why continue to dissect mere mortal organizations?
Should we destroy the institutuion that is our Tasmanian Government because of the corruptness of those who run it?

Sorry to end on this note, but my philosophy in life is and will always remain, “Do unto others as I would have them do to me!”

Posted by Rocky on 15/07/07 at 12:14 PM

Ozziepa,
The claim the earliest Christian writings are the letters of St Paul, these are said to date from between 48 and 60 AD. But no original documents exist and the authenticity of Paul’s epistles has been doubted since the 18th century. The earliest copies, from the 3rd century, are held by a American copper millionaire, Chester Beatty. Beatty bought parts of eleven biblical codices from dealers in Cairo. One codex contains the four gospels and Acts, another the letters of Paul, and a third a late 3rd century copy of Revelation. Significantly, the Pauline letters in the “P46” papyri are arranged in an unusual order and exclude the pastorals. Of the thirteen letters that bear the name of Paul, nine of them are addressed to churches and four to individuals, however there was no church at the time the religious date them to.
It’s interesting that the four Gospels written a long time after Paul, don’t mention or even hint at an apostle called Paul. So according to the gospel writers, Paul does not exist. Equally curious is that Paul’s letters reciprocate the ignorance of the gospel writers, by giving no knowledge of apostolic writings. The evangelist Matthew, the tax collector so good at making up prophesies for the coming of Jesus out of Jewish scripture, is never mentioned in any Pauline epistle. The evangelist John, son of Zebedee and the only other disciple credited with a gospel, is dismissed by Paul in a single phrase from his entire corpus: ” James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars .. “. Even then, the occasion was seventeen years after Paul’s miraculous conversion, when the apostle proudly declared he “learned nothing” from the supposed companions of the god man (Galatians 2.6,9), and that included John, “the one Jesus loved”! Even the central drama of Jesus is referenced so obliquely and fleetingly in Paul’s letters that one realizes that the author’s “risen Christ” is a different entity entirely, from the supposed carpenter of the gospels.
According to Acts, the evangelist Mark (aka John Mark) did feature in the adventures of Paul. He deserted the apostle’s first mission at Perga and became the cause of an acrimonious falling out between Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15.38,39). Yet Paul makes no reference to this event in his own letters and his three passing references to Mark are meaningless and very dubious. Mark’s references to Paul are non-existent. Even the dubious Epistle of Barnabas, supposedly the work of Paul’s first companion, never mentions Paul. Not even the book of Acts, supposedly written by Luke, Paul’s long-time travelling companion and with him even in the condemned cell (2 Timothy 4.11), makes any reference to, or even hints at the existence of the Pauline epistles, the seminal work that defines christian theology and makes up one third of the entire New Testament!
What Ross posted wasn’t evidence, but another religious attempt at deception. Nor has he returned to support himself, simply because he can’t. I can assure you if evidence for the existence of a loving caring god, could be presented. Or evidence that proves Jesus was real and did what is attributed to him, then I would certainly change my mind. Sadly that will never happen, 3500 years of forcing these lies as truth, has made no difference nor provided any beneficial progress for this planet. On the contrary, the evidence shows nothing but evil outcomes deriving from this monotheistic belief.

Posted by stormbay on 15/07/07 at 02:03 PM

Ozziepa, until Ross is able to provide solid evidence of the claims he makes in Post #48, I am unable to take him seriously. I am prepared to respect the fact he has a belief system, but that is not the same is being able to pontificate that some claims are ‘verifiably true’ while are others are not.

So he doesn’t agree with some of the Greens’ policies—that does not qualify him to declare that claims made about those policies are true.

The fact that he thinks he can points to pretty much the core of the problem of how some people have embraced organised religion.

Posted by Cameron on 15/07/07 at 05:28 PM

Hi Stormbay

How about coming up with some evidence of your claims.

For instance your statement “All the earlier writers you have stated as being proof of they having known Jesus, have been archaeologically and anthropologically debunked as deceptions”.

Can you provide some proof of that statement?

Posted by Ross Petersen on 16/07/07 at 06:10 AM

65
That’s sorta what I reckon too about the tiny little sect. Except It’s not a sect it’s just a relative minority of those who claim to be Christian ... and mind you, there are also people who won’t claim to be christian, but who go with Jesus, bceause of the fact that in the world the word christian has so many incorrect connotations.

Posted by Flounder on 16/07/07 at 08:59 AM

I did lodge this a day or so ago, but it either hasn’t been through the moderator or got lost again. I’m happy to provide evidence to support what I say, however it just depends on how much others want to trawl through.

Ozziepa,
The claim the earliest Christian writings are the letters of St Paul, are said to date from between 48 and 60 AD. But no original documents exist and the authenticity of Paul’s epistles has been doubted since the 18th century. The earliest copies, from the 3rd century, are held by a American copper millionaire, Chester Beatty. Beatty bought parts of eleven biblical codices from dealers in Cairo. One codex contains the four gospels and Acts, another the letters of Paul, and a third a late 3rd century copy of Revelation. Significantly, the Pauline letters in the “P46” papyri are arranged in an unusual order and exclude the pastorals. Of the thirteen letters that bear the name of Paul, nine of them are addressed to churches and four to individuals, however there was no church at the time the religious date them to.
It’s interesting that the four Gospels written a long time after Paul, don’t mention or even hint at an apostle called Paul. So according to the gospel writers, Paul does not exist. Equally curious is that Paul’s letters reciprocate the ignorance of the gospel writers, by giving no knowledge of apostolic writings. The evangelist Matthew, the tax collector so good at making up prophesies for the coming of Jesus out of Jewish scripture, is never mentioned in any Pauline epistle. The evangelist John, son of Zebedee and the only other disciple credited with a gospel, is dismissed by Paul in a single phrase from his entire corpus: ” James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars .. “. Even then, the occasion was seventeen years after Paul’s miraculous conversion, when the apostle proudly declared he “learned nothing” from the supposed companions of the god man (Galatians 2.6,9), and that included John, “the one Jesus loved”! Even the central drama of Jesus is referenced so obliquely and fleetingly in Paul’s letters that one realizes that the author’s “risen Christ” is a different entity entirely, from the supposed carpenter of the gospels.
According to Acts, the evangelist Mark (aka John Mark) did feature in the adventures of Paul. He deserted the apostle’s first mission at Perga and became the cause of an acrimonious falling out between Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15.38,39). Yet Paul makes no reference to this event in his own letters and his three passing references to Mark are meaningless and very dubious. Mark’s references to Paul are non-existent. Even the dubious Epistle of Barnabas, supposedly the work of Paul’s first companion, never mentions Paul. Not even the book of Acts, supposedly written by Luke, Paul’s long-time travelling companion and with him even in the condemned cell (2 Timothy 4.11), makes any reference to, or even hints at the existence of the Pauline epistles, the seminal work that defines christian theology and makes up one third of the entire New Testament!
What Ross posted wasn’t evidence, but another religious attempt at deception. Nor has he returned to support himself, simply because he can’t. I can assure you if evidence for the existence of a loving caring god, could be presented. Or evidence that proves Jesus was real and did what is attributed to him, then I would certainly change my mind. Sadly that will never happen, 3500 years of forcing these lies as truth, has made no difference nor provided any beneficial progress for this planet. On the contrary, the evidence shows nothing but evil outcomes deriving from this monotheistic belief.

Posted by stormbay on 16/07/07 at 09:03 AM

Sounds like the scriptures have spindly legs. Maybe its called the holy bible because its like swiss cheese because there’s ample experience to say that there’s plenty of calcium in it.

Flounder
ps Editor Tuffin, maybe we need to organise this long string into another structure. The Exclusive Bretheren have paled away.

Posted by Flounder on 16/07/07 at 10:06 AM

I don’t really care how many people either claim to be or really are christians, nor do I care whether there is a god or not.

The important thing is how you live, and it is essential to live as if there is no god, otherwise you have priorities that devalue the real world and its component parts (including humans).

A small minority of christians might believe absolutely that “thou shalt not kill”, but as long as they have faith in some supernatural entity and live accordingly, then they are effectively killers.

If your god put you to the Abraham test, would you pass it? If you have real faith you must put your god’s will above love for family, friends, colleagues, your nation, world peace, the environment and any other claimant on your love. And don’t try to tell me there can never be a conflict.

By the way, I still want to know the answers to my questions in post 58. How did we end up with a Bible exactly as it is?

Posted by Justa Bloke on 16/07/07 at 02:05 PM

I think stormbay wrote it JB in an absent minded moment. I reckon he probably thinks he has written most of the significant works of our time.

Posted by John Herbert on 17/07/07 at 03:27 PM

I’m impressed with StormBay!

Posted by Flounder on 17/07/07 at 06:03 PM

John Herbert, it’s clear you have nothing of substance to say, other than spiteful. A common trait of gods followers. John, I’m not an educated person, just someone who has spent lot of their life trying to find the real truth, regarding the primitive, infantile, yahweh myth. It’s a sign of how unevolved monotheists are, in that they have no idea of the origins or real history of their own beliefs. I find that as rather bizarre and illogical, but typical of a low mentality.

Just a bloke, which bible are you talking about, the OT or the NT. They both have different origins, yet much of what is written in them comes from the same sources, written well before they appeared. To put it simply, in the 4th century the church sat down and decided what text would go in the bible and what they would discard. Many changes were made to the original texts, with ongoing revisions to suit the churches and continues today. Over the next few hundred years, they changed and added to other historical texts, as well as made many up to give the picture they wanted. You’ll find it all documented within the Roman catholic churches recorded history, they killed any who disagreed, hence the demise of the other variations of the yahweh jesus cult in the first few hundred years.. When reading the bibles of today, you will find very little that equates to the original text and meanings. The NT bible is derived from one source, a copy of many copies written by scribes more than 300 years after the supposed event. There is nothing to support anything the religious demand as truth. Much of what is written within it can be found in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hindu Vedic texts. What people seem to forget is 2000 years ago, 99% of people were illiterate, so story teller scribes travelled around relating new stories and news to the towns they passed through.

It’s only in the last couple of hundred years that literacy has begun to be available outside the elite and churches. The churches originally banned the first printing presses to stop the people from having access to biblical and historical works. That’s how they have kept control over the worlds populace, now its different as people have access to the real historical, archaeological and chronological facts. Now the myth of Yahweh is being revealed for what it is, debauched, violent, suppressive and a pack of mythical lies. A glaring example is the EB, yet if you look just a little, you will find all factions, cults and sects of god are riddled with barbarity, debauched practices and constantly in internal or external conflict with the world around them.

Posted by stormbay on 18/07/07 at 09:10 AM

Hello again Stormy
Your statements again sound impressive. I’m impressed (genuinely) by your knowledge of the scriptures and wonder where that came from?

However it would seem that you ‘sanitise’ the information to suit your own ends. One example I’ll quote that you missed, is the fact that Peter refers to Paul’s writings in his letters and I quote:

“And so dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to live a pure and blameless life. And be at peace with God. And remember, the Lord is waiting so that people have time to be saved. This is just as our beloved brother Paul wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him-speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters around to mean something quite different from what he meant, just as they do the other parts of Scripture-and the result is disaster for them.”.
II Peter 3.15ff New Living Translation

Obviously, not all the writers of the New Testament knew of the writings of the others at the time they were writing because they hadn’t been collated at that time.

I The N.T. was written between AD50-100
II The Books collected and read AD 100-200
III The books examined compared with spurious writings, AD200-300
IV Complete agreement reached on canonicity, AD 300-400

Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Ephesus, all of whom wrote around the end of the first century, together refer to all the N.T. books except Luke, Colossians, II & III John, Jude and Revelation.

Justin Martyr (about 140AD) refers to all the Gospels as ‘memoirs of the Apostles and those who followed them.’
Irenaeus (about 170AD) omits Hebrews, James, I & II Pter but quotes from all N.T. books except Philemon and III John.

The Muratorian fragment has a “canon” which includes 2 Gospels (Matthew and Mark appear to be broken off), Acts, 13 Epistles by Paul, Jude, 2 by John and Revelation. It accepts the Apocalypse of Peter but rejects the Shepherd of Hermas.

During the 4th Cent. the books were classified into 2 groups,
I Those ‘confessed’ (or declared) canonical ie those which all churches accepted as having apostlic authority. Some difficulty appears to have been experienced with Hebrews and Revelation but they are included in this group.
II Those ‘spoken against’ by some but generally received, James, II peter, I & III John and Jude

The most frequently mentioned books which were claimants for places in the canon were the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, the Didache and the Sherpherd of Hermas.

By the time of the Councils of Laodicea, AD 363, and Carthage, AD 397, the 27 canonical books of the N.T. are firmly established as the only books acknowledged to possess the authority of apostolicity.

The books ere self-authenticating and the churches, regognizing this, acknowldeged the books we now have as possessing the special right and quality which demand inclusion in the Canon of the N.T.

I hope this helps towards answering your question.

Regards

Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 18/07/07 at 09:36 AM

So (Ozziepa 81) there was dispute as to which writings were included. Fair enough, but on what criteria were these disputes resolved? Did the writings have to fit a pre-decided set of criteria, and if so how were these criteria established and by whom?

Who bestowed authority on those who made the decisions?

Did those Fourth Century church councils take into account the fact that they were operating within a specific historical and cultural context, and that therefore their decisions had no guarantee of being valid outside those contexts?

How can anything be “self-authenticating”?

How do we know that those who wrote the writings that form the Koran and/or the Book of Mormon did not have the same authority? There are millions of people who believe that they do, so how do you prove them wrong?

It would seem by the evidence you present that the church is responsible for the contents of the Bible. Where church practice and biblical texts are in conflict whose side does God take, and how do we know?

Posted by Justa Bloke on 18/07/07 at 12:08 PM

yeah, you said all that before old stormbay. I can’t quite see where you thought I was spiteful or how it is possible to follow someone who in your view ain’t there.

Perhaps you can arrange a cult around him then flounder and together you can create your own religion. Got to be better than banging on about what doom and gloom the others are apparently accountable for.

Posted by John Herbert on 18/07/07 at 01:25 PM

Ozziepa, Sanitation is a known ploy of the religious. 11 Peter 3.15 does mention a Paul, a very common name of the times, as now. However what you have quoted is nothing like the original Greek, nor the accepted lineal translation. I won’t quote the Greek, as I know how confusing it would be, but the accepted literal English states,

“and account the long suffering of our Lord salvation even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you”.

Nothing like what you’ve posted, just something made up by the religious. Trying to use a proven plagiarised book, (bible) to prove the bible is true, is just like saying a rock will float because you alone say it will.

As to Josh Mc Dowell, he’s been debunked on many occasions, even respected theologians disagree with him entirely. It would take a long time to go through all the failings and lies Mc dowell has conjured up, add to the fact that he’s a total nut case amassing large amounts of money from the gullible and stupid and you can see where his credibility lies.

Many writings have been falsely attributed to the supposed Pope St. Clement: (about 30-96 A.D.) The ‘Second Clementine Epistle to the Corinthians.’ having been read in the Churches, many believed them genuine. But most theologians and historians say they can’t be by the same author, they include, Epistle to the Corinthians, Two Epistles to Virgins and the five letters attributed to St. Clement, the Pscudo-Isidorian Decretals. Also ascribed to Clement are the ‘Apostolic Constitutions,’ Apostolic Canons,’ the Testament of our lord, The ‘Clementines’ or ‘Pseudo-Clementines,’ including the Recognitions and Homilies.

The second of these alleged Epistles of Clement to the Corinthians is an admitted forgery, together with everything else in his name, except the First Epistle. The case for this First Epistle is little if any better; as it is a flimsy basis of one of the proudest claims of Church.

“The author is certainly not Clement of Rome, whatever may be our judgement as to whether or not Clement was a bishop, a martyr, a disciple of the apostles. The martyrdom, set forth in untrustworthy Acts, has for its sole foundation the identification of Clement of Rome with Flavius Clement the consul, who was executed by command of Domitian,” ( A.D. 81-96). This First Epistle is supposed to have been written about the year 96-98, by Clement, friend and co-worker of Paul, according to the late “tradition” first set in motion by Dionysius, A.D. 170. But this Clement, after citing the church Fathers, “was probably a Philippian.”, who also said, “Who the Clement was to whom the writings were ascribed, cannot with absolute certainty be determined.”

The “First Epistle” doesn’t contain or mention the name of anyone as its author, definitely not Clement. It’s headed, “The Church of God which sojourns at Rome, to the Church of God sojourning at Corinth.” There is only one manuscript of it in existence, a translation into Latin from the original Greek. This is the celebrated manuscript of “Holy Scripture” known as Codex A, which was discovered and presented to Charles I of England by Cyril of Alexandria, in 1628, the Fathers of the church cited both I and II Clement as the writer. But at the end of I Clement, is written, “The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians” a statement which proves itself a forgery and that it was not written by Clement, who could not know that a later forger, would write a “Second Clement,” so he could call his own the First.

Posted by stormbay on 18/07/07 at 02:01 PM

Whoever the “First Epistle” was written by, Father, Bishop, or Pope of Rome, his intelligence is demonstrated by his argument, in Chapter xxv, of the truth of the Resurrection. As proof of which he makes this faithful plea: “Let us consider that wonderful sign (of the resurrection) which takes place in Eastern lands, that is, in Arabia and the countries round about. There is a certain bird which is called a phoenix. This is the only one of its kind, and lives five hundred years. And when the time of its dissolution draws near that it must die, it builds itself a nest of frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices, into which, when the time is fulfilled, it enters and dies. But as the flesh decays a certain kind of worm is produced, which, being nourished by the juices of the dead bird, brings forth feathers. Then, when it has acquired strength, it takes up that nest in which are the bones of its parent, and bearing these it passes from the land of Arabia into Egypt, to the City called Heliopolis. And, in open day, flying in the sight of all men, it places them on the altar of the sun, and having done this, hastens back to its former abode. The priests then inspect the registers of the dates, and find that it has returned exactly as the 500th year was completed.”

This fable respecting the phoenix is mentioned by Herodotus and by Pliny and is used by Tertullian and by other church Fathers. The time for the pretended writing of this Epistle, and the very high significance of it, can be seen if you read a copy of the original of the Church, which is held at Roine. The problem the religious face, is the evidence for anything they say is flimsy at best and down right lies in reality. None of the scriptures and most of all church writings had authors, the names to the gospels were added in the 5-6th century, until then they were without authorship, just like Clements. Copies of copies written entirely by scribes and forgers hundreds of years later.

I’m happy to address the fallacies of Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Ephesus, the contradictions and falsehoods aligned with them, could run into pages. The rest of those you base you truth on, can also be debunked with fact.

Posted by stormbay on 18/07/07 at 02:02 PM

Hello again Stormbay
The point I was making about Peter’s reference to Paul is simply that there is a reference in the N.T. writings to him. Which you seemed to be implying was not so.
I could have quoted another more accurate translation if I wished but the essential point was that there was a reference to Pauline writings in Peter’s epistle. Which you concur with although like many critics you cast aspersions on by saying ‘a Paul’.
To make a sweeping statement about the American lawyer Josh McDowell that is simply dismissive of his arguments for the accuracy of the Scriptures (in Evidence that demands a verdict), & the Resurrection (in Who Moved the Stone), is not good enough & defamatory.
For me, the greatest proof of the reality of the risen Christ is that I have come to know Him personally (back in 1969) and He has changed my life and that of others I know. You can’t prove God to anyone, but this is simply some evidence I put before you, which to you won’t carry much weight I’m aware.
It will only irritate you as something that is intangible and inadmissable but I believe it should be mentioned anyway. I only became interested in Jesus when I saw an radical change for the better in my mum.
I am definitely not speaking about religion here, but about a relationship with the God of creation who one day you as well as me will stand before. He is your God too, whether you accept that or not. The truth, is the truth, no matter what our opinion may be. You will agree with that too and will cite your own research as evidence and I respect that (which is more than you seem to have for those who oppose your view.)
We will just have to differ, because nothing you say will persuade me that the 38 years I have had walking with the living God were a figment of my imagination. I guess I am calling forth myself as a witness & Ross Petersen, & there are many others. The Bible (a court of law would agree) says ‘In the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses shall every word be established’.
If that’s not good enough, and I’m sure it won’t be, then we just have to agree to disagree. No one will ever seek to know God unless they feel they have a need to.
My comments were a response to Justa Bloke’s query, not to you. He’ll now have to consider what you have said and decide whether to take it further and follow up on what I’ve suggested or accept your advice and turn away from seeking God.
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 20/07/07 at 08:33 AM

Now I’m really confused. Ozziepa assumes that I am “seeking God”, a mission which I am in danger of “turning away from”.

I merely wanted to know more about how it happened that a particular and finite set of writings, composed by humans, came to be considered a source of authority.

As I said before, I believe we should live as if there is no god.

If somebody’s life being changed is “proof of the reality of the risen Christ”, then how about my friend who had a gender reassignment? Or another friend of mine who went to gaol for many years? Or my cousin who became a quadriplegic after a road accident? Or my uncle who went from being on the Burma Railway to winning a huge lottery within a few years? Or a former colleague who became a Muslim?

All these people (and millions more) had their lives changed dramatically. None of this has anything at all to do with your “Christ”. If your life changed and it made you feel better, then good for you. Just don’t pretend that is “evidence” of anything else.

The sooner the world gets rid of faith-based claptrap the greater chance we shall all have of a better life.

Posted by Justa Bloke on 20/07/07 at 11:12 AM

Ozziepa, a look at the verifiable chronology will show the Paul referred to, can’t be described as the supposed writer of the letters. Again only copies of many copies written hundreds of years later do not authenticate them as being real, quite the opposite. Using the bible to try to prove the bible is right, is as sure sign of being entrapped in delusion.

I’ve read “Evidence that demands a verdict” and “Who Moved the Stone” as I do most publications purporting to provide proof of the veracity of the bibles, jesus and god. Sadly Mc Dowell lives deep within egotistical fantasy, you can’t defame someone with regard to them demanding fantasy is real. Nothing he puts forward proves anything supportable, it’s just illusional deluded fantasy.

Religion is god, logically inseparable, except in the minds of those unable to see clearly and take responsibility for their life. Your again trying to use the apologist ploy, of trying to separate yourself from the facts relating to your violent myths verifiable outcomes for the world. Sadly for you, this is not the 12th century and people now are literate, unlike up until about 100 years ago, when the churches could fool them as most couldn’t read nor search for truth and bowed down to the suppression by the churches and mosques. I am certainly not trying to change you, that’s not possible as you are firmly entrenched within your fearful desire to abrogate your lives responsibility to a primitive mythological god of war. All I am doing is pointing out to the many intelligent who view these threads, what is fact and what is delusional. Your attempts to instil fear in people being judged upon death, is another failed ploy. In the entire history of your jesus, there has been no one who can verify a judgement, none have returned from the grave, your jesus hasn’t appeared and your god continues it rampant worldwide destruction. If there is any judgement, it is all heaped upon god’s followers as they support the ongoing debauchery, by their association and belief in the same mythical god whose name and following has been used throughout history, to justify the ongoing slaughter of all life..

My understanding of god and scripture, comes from being born into a family of church officers and having it drilled into me over the years along with many years of study and investigation trying to find some truth. But neither my family nor any within the various churches, could answer any questions or provide any proof of there being a god, any events depicted having happened, nor evidence to say the believe in Yahweh and his off shoots, allah and jesus has brought love and peace to the world. The facts are glaringly the opposite world wide. Adding to that, there are no verifiable witnesses to anything within the NT bible. As the only originals didn’t have the authors names, they were put there by the church hundreds of years later. Again another glaring form of verifiable evidence showing how false anything put up by gods followers really is. When you can’t even prove one word of the books you worship, all you have left are lies to rely on.

Posted by stormbay on 20/07/07 at 11:43 AM

Yeah ............, my faith in Jesus comes largely from out of the blue and the word of mouth and congenital link process. The Bible, whilst its got heaps of agreeable and clearly said stuff always tended to get a bit boring and lost in apparently meaningless stuff. I dont particularly care who writed it. It seems to stick together from book to book if you study it for years. It says it is the very word of God yet it in parts it is obviously the writers explaining their feelings. A spirit comes through it, from it or because of it. It fits with the only logical god; without faith in whom there is no hope whatsoever. I find I need hope. I find it unobtainable without faith. I believe faith is nourishing for God in my life and I find charity as a result, which is how I find the time to write thus.

Sure faith can be misconstrued as a mindset that determines outcomes or apparent outcomes, but not faith in god as it will be tested until proven true.

Things were bloody wicked. God was not here. It was gloomy. Jesus, son of God, came, did, married the disgusting world and suffered therefore. The marriage and the act of God that raised Him up made a cosmically real link between God and earth. A cobber of mine explained that to me in a few short words in the early 80’s at Wattle Hill.

Without that job done the whole world would be spiralling satanic. As it is there are people who have been able to bind with Jesus (the true Church)as part of the body of Christ.

Sure one of JC’s cobbers apparently slashed off the ear of a centurion with his sword, but the winds of wrong doing still wail on the planet. Probably Jesus healed the centurion whilst they were dragging Him away to ultimate execution. Maybe not; my point is we’re inclined in our ways and reactions. The killing under Bush and Idi Amin and the like happen for various reasons but all the reasons are based on moronic and/or fearful response to circumstance. The powerful veil their motives and seduce the soldiers some of whom are innocent trusting foolish churchgoers but who are not firmly bound in Jesus. Their grip allows the wailing winds to blow through their looseness.

Better get on with my work.

Coming out of the cupboard now;I just smell like a flounder, I’m really cupboardbound.

Posted by Flounder on 20/07/07 at 01:55 PM

Hello again Stormy
I object to the description ‘sadly’ that you use so often with regard to my beliefs. I’m actually quite a happy well adjusted person and if there’s anything sad, it’s my concern for people like yourself who have no hope.
It seems very obvious to me that it is impossible for you to acknowledge any love and compassion that Christians have for the world.
Neither do you acknowledge that God has such love and compassion for you and for all others. You concentrate on the death and destruction committed by those who claim to follow God, but refuse to see any good at all in Christians?
Surely you can admit bias in this regard, even if it were to acknowledge the good of someone like Mother Theresa for example. Her life was one of devotion to God and to His love for all people, especially the poor and sick. Her life mirrors that of Jesus Christ.
There are many others like Mother Theresa but you appear to be blind to them and refusing to see and acknowledge the good that is going on in this world.
What I’ve found is that many like you Stormy, have been turned right off true Christianity by being indoctrinated from an early age by religious systems. After all, it was religious people who found Jesus did not fit with their systems and had Him crucified.
They are the ones who will ‘look upon Me whom they pierced’ Zechariah 12.10, in that day when He returns which will happen as surely as His first coming. There were many who mocked Noah while he was building the ark. They had the chance to be saved but refused it.
It’s easy to mock, not so easy to live the Christian life. Live fish swim against the current. Dead ones simply float downstream.
Your acid tongue betrays an angry heart and I can see why. Religion kills, Jesus gives life.
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 21/07/07 at 10:54 AM

Hello Justa
My apologies for mis reading your motives in asking questions, I certainly didn’t mean to offend. With regard living as if there is no God, I reckon that’s a given. Happening everywhere which along with organised religion (which does the same ie rules are man made not God inspired) is the reason the world is in a mess.
Going down that path of course leaves you with no hope.
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 21/07/07 at 11:14 AM

StormBay ... you frustrate me and set a challenge. Your intellect is alert and has become expert at illustrating what you indicate is the only thing you have faith in. Yes Stormy, you have faith in something - your own mind. You may say that you don’t but that you just use what you have - yet you infer that evolution is some answer. If the evolving you just used what it has, you wouldnt evolve. Evolution takes outreach, actualisation takes outreach. There must be faith in a direction, in a goal, in a desire - or no evolution. If you would hold that evolution is not a factor and that you simply exist and use what you are, you will see that you are a being of mind - soul. We are all this of course. There is an order of communication among these minds - and hearts. You have faith in conveyance of understanding - it happens, like the heart beats. Hearty community grows and grows further for some.

There are those who would turn away from hearty community even at t he first step. They would become witches and the like. Some would become very very horrible - unspeakable obcenities and the like. Houlocast experimentors, Idi Amins, atom bomb testers, rampant killers with a goal to power etc etc.

These, some of whom would not even aknoledge a thought of God, are in reality savages. They cause unpeskable horror. The church cause is not the only one which appears afflicted with savagery. The savages are like this because the wont know God or because the dont have a good guy ethos like yours - a commonsense attitude of do unto others. Nevertheless these ‘guys’, savages. exist.

They ailment that afflicts thenm wails like a savage wind around our world.

What stops you from joining them - some strength of character .... sorry gotta go again.

Cupbpoardman

Posted by Cupboardbound on 21/07/07 at 05:24 PM

Ozziepa, Propaganda and fairy tales are not fact, nor the sign of intelligence or an evolved mind. You may not like my use of the word sadly, but it’s sad for the world what monotheism has brought it. Provide evidence for any verifiable benefit this debauched belief has brought to the planet.

You can’t expect any sane person to believe in the ark, Noah or any supposed biblical events, science and history shows evidence as the opposite. So mother Teresa’s “life mirrors that of jesus christ”, let me tell you about the real mother Teresa.

Dr. Robin Cox, Editor of ‘Lancet’, said Mother Teresa’s Kolkata hospital is highly unhygienic and dangerous for human life. After visiting the said hospital, he remarked, ‘This is not a treatment centre but a place where the dying can die in a dignified way.’ Mother Teresa who kept her hospitals and sisters in an impoverished state in order to get millions of tax-free dollars from international donors, was careful enough to get herself treated at the best hospitals in the world like the Massachusetts General in Boston. When she was unable to travel, as during her final illness, she got herself treated by the specialist at the prestigious R K Birla Heart Research Centre, a Hindu charitable institution in Calcutta.

“Mary Loudon, another English investigator, found as many as 60 patients sleeping on the floor in a single room of Mother Teresa’s hospital. Even rudimentary health procedures were not being followed. Loudon saw unsterilised needles being used and reused after being simply washed in cold water. Also, patients in need of even simple surgery were allowed to die instead of being sent to other hospitals in Calcutta!” - Ref. N.S. Rajaram (A Hindu View of the World)

“Charles Keating, who was involved in the biggest finance scams of America, donated a sum of 1.25 million dollars to Mother Teresa’s institution. He would also allow her to use his private aircraft. When his case was being tried, she wrote to the trial judge Lance Ito asking him to show clemency towards Keating saying, “He has always been kind and generous to God’s poor. Look into his heart and do what Jesus would have done in that circumstances.” The judge wrote back to Mother Teresa saying, “I submit the same challenge to you. Ask yourself what Jesus would have done if he were given the fruits of crime… money that had been stolen… I submit that Jesus would promptly return the money to its rightful owners… Do not keep the money. Return it to the rightful owners.” Thereafter, Mother Teresa did not reply to him and kept the stolen money.”

Patients who were admitted to Mother Teresa’s Kolkata hospital were only asked to pray for cure. No medication or painkillers were allowed even to terminally ill patients. It was not just patients that were treated under such appalling conditions, even health workers could not escape infections. Anne Sebba had pointed out that several of the nurses caught tuberculosis, and possibly AIDS! - Ref. N.S. Rajaram (A Hindu View of the World)

There’s much evidence showing this women as she really was and none to support the fantasies put forward by the church. Many of her nuns have written stating what a devil she was. When you live and worship a lie, all you have for evidence are lies and deceit. It’s easy to live a christian life, as your just a slave to delusion. All you have is fearful hope, or is it infantile fear and superstition.

Posted by stormbay on 22/07/07 at 07:13 AM

Cupboardbound, I have confidence in my ability to learn, cope and finally understand what lays before me in life. I don’t have faith in the future, but confidence in my ability to cope as best I can as it unfolds. To put ones confidence in a failed violent ideology is a fruitless exercise. Evolution is a constant striving for understanding, along with rational logic, it give you goals. Communities collapse because of controlling ideologies, a community should survive on trust, integrity and comradeship. You can’t get that within communities relying on suppressive religious controls, as history glaringly shows. You say those not believing in your myth are savages, yet the worst debauched humans throughout history, are the ideologists, 95% monotheists. Savages, are unevolved, primitive, superstitious, fearful people. They hate change and rely on repetitious dogma, resorting to violence in the end to prove their right and to destroy any who disagree. According to the worlds historical and current evidence, sounds and looks like a typical monotheist.

If the situation on our planet caused by monotheism wasn’t so bad, it would be a good laugh at watching the fools of the world bow down to nothing but fear and superstition. But the belief in god in all it’s forms is causing growing destruction. Just look at the politicians of major parties in this state, the country and round the world, all believe in god and most attend a church. Now they are a great example of how following god works. Lies, more lies, deceit and more deceit. Your god myths track record is one of total negativity, nothing else is viewable as evidence, nothing at all. Except gods followers constant denial of fact and reality.

Posted by stormbay on 22/07/07 at 07:48 AM

Justa
You could move to a country without any of the faith based clap-trap if you wished. Go to Bejing or Moscow.
Though you might deny that the freedoms and laws we enjoy here come from faith based (claptrap?).
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 22/07/07 at 09:28 AM

When the church stoped burning people they lost their power over the people only the hoplesly brainwashed kept beleiving in the lie that the romans used to control the empire through fear.This is what the E.B do today to control their flock.A fossil,an ice core or even the presence of oil all prove that the churches are based on lies.Even god stood by when his boy got nailed to a cross and the world has been wonderfull ever since.PS waiting for a lightning bolt ha ha

Posted by steve on 22/07/07 at 02:07 PM

Ozziepa, I fail to see what is the practical value of hope. Nor do I want to go to Moscow (where the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church and other kinds of organised crime seem to reign supreme (no better, apparently, than the Stalinist butchers they took over from). Beijing appeals even less. Why should I leave Australia? It seems as good an irreligious society as any. Not that I “enjoy” some of our laws. I’d love to change a few of them, but meanwhile I’ll be content to break the ones I want to break and hope I don’t get caught (again).

But hope? It’s worse than faith.

Posted by Justa Bloke on 22/07/07 at 07:43 PM

If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves in a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that’s okay, he’s God. He can do whatever he wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of morality, decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond recognition by the very book that is supposedly preaching the opposite.
d.d

Richard Dawkins is Oxford’s Professor of Public Understanding of Science. He is the author of The Blind Watchmaker (on which this article is partly based) and Climbing Mount Improbable. He is a Senior Editor of Free Inquiry.

Much of what people do is done in the name of God. Irishmen blow each other up in his name. Arabs blow themselves up in his name. Imams and ayatollahs oppress women in his name. Celibate popes and priests mess up people’s sex lives in his name. Jewish shohets cut live animals’ throats in his name. The achievements of religion in past history—bloody crusades, torturing inquisitions, mass-murdering conquistadors, culture-destroying missionaries, legally enforced resistance to each new piece of scientific truth until the last possible moment—are even more impressive. And what has it all been in aid of? I believe it is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is absolutely nothing at all. There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist and quite good reason for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren’t so tragic.

Why do people believe in God? For most people the answer is still some version of the ancient Argument from Design. We look about us at the beauty and intricacy of the world—at the aerodynamic sweep of a swallow’s wing, at the delicacy of flowers and of the butterflies that fertilize them, through a microscope at the teeming life in every drop of pond water, through a telescope at the crown of a giant redwood tree. We reflect on the electronic complexity and optical perfection of our own eyes that do the looking. If we have any imagination, these things drive us to a sense of awe and reverence. Moreover, we cannot fail to be struck by the obvious resemblance of living organs to the carefully planned designs of human engineers. The argument was most famously expressed in the watchmaker analogy of the eighteenth-century priest William Paley. Even if you didn’t know what a watch was, the obviously designed character of its cogs and springs and of how they mesh together for a purpose would force you to conclude “that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.” If this is true of a comparatively simple watch, how much the more so is it true of the eye, ear, kidney, elbow joint, brain? These beautiful, complex, intricate, and obviously purpose-built structures must have had their own designer, their own watchmaker—God.

So ran Paley’s argument, and it is an argument that nearly all thoughtful and sensitive people discover for themselves at some stage in their childhood. Throughout most of history it must have seemed utterly convincing, self-evidently true. And yet, as the result of one of the most astonishing intellectual revolutions in history, we now know that it is wrong, or at least superfluous. We now know that the order and apparent purposefulness of the living world has come about through an entirely different process, a process that works without the need for any designer and one that is a consequence of basically very simple laws of physics. This is the process of evolution by natural selection, discovered by Charles Darwin and, independently, by Alfred Russel Wallace.

What do all objects that look as if they must have had a designer have in common? The answer is statistical improbability. If we find a transparent pebble washed into the shape of a crude lens by the sea, we do not conclude that it must have been designed by an optician: the unaided laws of physics are capable of achieving this result; it is not too improbable to have just “happened.” But if we find an elaborate compound lens, carefully corrected against spherical and chromatic aberration, coated against glare, and with “Carl Zeiss” engraved on the rim, we know that it could not have just happened by chance. If you take all the atoms of such a compound lens and throw them together at random under the jostling influence of the ordinary laws of physics in nature, it is theoretically possible that, by sheer luck, the atoms would just happen to fall into the pattern of a Zeiss compound lens, and even that the atoms round the rim should happen to fall in such a way that the name Carl Zeiss is etched out. But the number of other ways in which the atoms could, with equal likelihood, have fallen, is so hugely, vastly, immeasurably greater that we can completely discount the chance hypothesis. Chance is out of the question as an explanation.

Continued.

Posted by don davey on 22/07/07 at 10:41 PM

continued
This is not a circular argument, by the way. It might seem to be circular because, it could be said, any particular arrangement of atoms is, with hindsight, very improbable. As has been said before, when a ball lands on a particular blade of grass on the golf course, it would be foolish to exclaim: “Out of all the billions of blades of grass that it could have fallen on, the ball actually fell on this one. How amazingly, miraculously improbable!” The fallacy here, of course, is that the ball had to land somewhere. We can only stand amazed at the improbability of the actual event if we specify it a priori: for example, if a blindfolded man spins himself round on the tee, hits the ball at random, and achieves a hole in one. That would be truly amazing, because the target destination of the ball is specified in advance.

Of all the trillions of different ways of putting together the atoms of a telescope, only a minority would actually work in some useful way. Only a tiny minority would have Carl Zeiss engraved on them, or, indeed, any recognizable words of any human language. The same goes for the parts of a watch: of all the billions of possible ways of putting them together, only a tiny minority will tell the time or do anything useful. And of course the same goes, a fortiori, for the parts of a living body. Of all the trillions of trillions of ways of putting together the parts of a body, only an infinitesimal minority would live, seek food, eat, and reproduce. True, there are many different ways of being alive—at least ten million different ways if we count the number of distinct species alive today—but, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead!

We can safely conclude that living bodies are billions of times too complicated—too statistically improbable—to have come into being by sheer chance. How, then, did they come into being? The answer is that chance enters into the story, but not a single, monolithic act of chance. Instead, a whole series of tiny chance steps, each one small enough to be a believable product of its predecessor, occurred one after the other in sequence. These small steps of chance are caused by genetic mutations, random changes—mistakes really—in the genetic material. They give rise to changes in the existing bodily structure. Most of these changes are deleterious and lead to death. A minority of them turn out to be slight improvements, leading to increased survival and reproduction. By this process of natural selection, those random changes that turn out to be beneficial eventually spread through the species and become the norm. The stage is now set for the next small change in the evolutionary process. After, say, a thousand of these small changes in series, each change providing the basis for the next, the end result has become, by a process of accumulation, far too complex to have come about in a single act of chance.

For instance, it is theoretically possible for an eye to spring into being, in a single lucky step, from nothing: from bare skin, let’s say. It is theoretically possible in the sense that a recipe could be written out in the form of a large number of mutations. If all these mutations happened simultaneously, a complete eye could, indeed, spring from nothing. But although it is theoretically possible, it is in practice inconceivable. The quantity of luck involved is much too large. The “correct” recipe involves changes in a huge number of genes simultaneously. The correct recipe is one particular combination of changes out of trillions of equally probable combinations of chances. We can certainly rule out such a miraculous coincidence. But it is perfectly plausible that the modern eye could have sprung from something almost the same as the modern eye but not quite: a very slightly less elaborate eye. By the same argument, this slightly less elaborate eye sprang from a slightly less elaborate eye still, and so on. If you assume a sufficiently large number of sufficiently small differences between each evolutionary stage and its predecessor, you are bound to be able to derive a full, complex, working eye from bare skin. How many intermediate stages are we allowed to postulate? That depends on how much time we have to play with. Has there been enough time for eyes to evolve by little steps from nothing?

d.d.

Posted by don davey on 22/07/07 at 10:50 PM

The fossils tell us that life has been evolving on

Earth for more than 3,000 million years. It is almost impossible for the human mind to grasp such an immensity of time. We, naturally and mercifully, tend to see our own expected lifetime as a fairly long time, but we can’t expect to live even one century. It is 2,000 years since Jesus lived, a time span long enough to blur the distinction between history and myth. Can you imagine a million such periods laid end to end? Suppose we wanted to write the whole history on a single long scroll. If we crammed all of Common Era history into one metre of scroll, how long would the pre-Common Era part of the scroll, back to the start of evolution, be? The answer is that the pre-Common Era part of the scroll would stretch from Milan to Moscow. Think of the implications of this for the quantity of evolutionary change that can be accommodated. All the domestic breeds of dogs—Pekingeses, poodles, spaniels, Saint Bernards, and Chihuahuas—have come from wolves in a time span measured in hundreds or at the most thousands of years: no more than two meters along the road from Milan to Moscow. Think of the quantity of change involved in going from a wolf to a Pekingese; now multiply that quantity of change by a million. When you look at it like that, it becomes easy to believe that an eye could have evolved from no eye by small degrees.

It remains necessary to satisfy ourselves that every one of the intermediates on the evolutionary route, say from bare skin to a modern eye, would have been favored by natural selection; would have been an improvement over its predecessor in the sequence or at least would have survived. It is no good proving to ourselves that there is theoretically a chain of almost perceptibly different intermediates leading to an eye if many of those intermediates would have died. It is sometimes argued that the parts of an eye have to be all there together or the eye won’t work at all. Half an eye, the argument runs, is no better than no eye at all. You can’t fly with half a wing; you can’t hear with half an ear. Therefore there can’t have been a series of step-by-step intermediates leading up to a modern eye, wing, or ear.

This type of argument is so naive that one can only wonder at the subconscious motives for wanting to believe it. It is obviously not true that half an eye is useless. Cataract sufferers who have had their lenses surgically removed cannot see very well without glasses, but they are still much better off than people with no eyes at all. Without a lens you can’t focus a detailed image, but you can avoid bumping into obstacles and you could detect the looming shadow of a predator.

As for the argument that you can’t fly with only half a wing, it is disproved by large numbers of very successful gliding animals, including mammals of many different kinds, lizards, frogs, snakes, and squids. Many different kinds of tree-dwelling animals have flaps of skin between their joints that really are fractional wings. If you fall out of a tree, any skin flap or flattening of the body that increases your surface area can save your life. And, however small or large your flaps may be, there must always be a critical height such that, if you fall from a tree of that height, your life would have been saved by just a little bit more surface area. Then, when your descendants have evolved that extra surface area, their lives would be saved by just a bit more still if they fell from trees of a slightly greater height. And so on by insensibly graded steps until, hundreds of generations later, we arrive at full wings.

Eyes and wings cannot spring into existence in a single step. That would be like having the almost infinite luck to hit upon the combination number that opens a large bank vault. But if you spun the dials of the lock at random, and every time you got a little bit closer to the lucky number the vault door creaked open another chink, you would soon have the door open! Essentially, that is the secret of how evolution by natural selection achieves what once seemed impossible. Things that cannot plausibly be derived from very different predecessors can plausibly be derived from only slightly different predecessors. Provided only that there is a sufficiently long series of such slightly different predecessors, you can derive anything from anything else.

d.d.
continued

Posted by don davey on 22/07/07 at 11:06 PM

continued

Evolution, then, is theoretically capable of doing the job that, once upon a time, seemed to be the prerogative of God. But is there any evidence that evolution actually has happened? The answer is yes; the evidence is overwhelming. Millions of fossils are found in exactly the places and at exactly the depths that we should expect if evolution had happened. Not a single fossil has ever been found in any place where the evolution theory would not have expected it, although this could very easily have happened: a fossil mammal in rocks so old that fishes have not yet arrived, for instance, would be enough to disprove the evolution theory.

The patterns of distribution of living animals and plants on the continents and islands of the world is exactly what would be expected if they had evolved from common ancestors by slow, gradual degrees. The patterns of resemblance among animals and plants is exactly what we should expect if some were close cousins, and others more distant cousins to each other. The fact that the genetic code is the same in all living creatures overwhelmingly suggests that all are descended from one single ancestor. The evidence for evolution is so compelling that the only way to save the creation theory is to assume that God deliberately planted enormous quantities of evidence to make it look as if evolution had happened. In other words, the fossils, the geographical distribution of animals, and so on, are all one gigantic confidence trick. Does anybody want to worship a God capable of such trickery? It is surely far more reverent, as well as more scientifically sensible, to take the evidence at face value. All living creatures are cousins of one another, descended from one remote ancestor that lived more than 3,000 million years ago.

The Argument from Design, then, has been destroyed as a reason for believing in a God. Are there any other arguments? Some people believe in God because of what appears to them to be an inner revelation. Such revelations are not always edifying but they undoubtedly feel real to the individual concerned. Many inhabitants of lunatic asylums have an unshakable inner faith that they are Napoleon or, indeed, God himself. There is no doubting the power of such convictions for those that have them, but this is no reason for the rest of us to believe them. Indeed, since such beliefs are mutually contradictory, we can’t believe them all.

There is a little more that needs to be said. Evolution by natural selection explains a lot, but it couldn’t start from nothing. It couldn’t have started until there was some kind of rudimentary reproduction and heredity. Modern heredity is based on the DNA code, which is itself too complicated to have sprung spontaneously into being by a single act of chance. This seems to mean that there must have been some earlier hereditary system, now disappeared, which was simple enough to have arisen by chance and the laws of chemistry and which provided the medium in which a primitive form of cumulative natural selection could get started. DNA was a later product of this earlier cumulative selection. Before this original kind of natural selection, there was a period when complex chemical compounds were built up from simpler ones and before that a period when the chemical elements were built up from simpler elements, following the well-understood laws of physics. Before that, everything was ultimately built up from pure hydrogen in the immediate aftermath of the big bang, which initiated the universe
d.d
continued

Posted by don davey on 22/07/07 at 11:09 PM

finale
There is a temptation to argue that, although God may not be needed to explain the evolution of complex order once the universe, with its fundamental laws of physics, had begun, we do need a God to explain the origin of all things. This idea doesn’t leave God with very much to do: just set off the big bang, then sit back and wait for everything to happen. The physical chemist Peter Atkins, in his beautifully written book The Creation, postulates a lazy God who strove to do as little as possible in order to initiate everything. Atkins explains how each step in the history of the universe followed, by simple physical law, from its predecessor. He thus pares down the amount of work that the lazy creator would need to do and eventually concludes that he would in fact have needed to do nothing at all!

The details of the early phase of the universe belong to the realm of physics, whereas I am a biologist, more concerned with the later phases of the evolution of complexity. For me, the important point is that, even if the physicist needs to postulate an irreducible minimum that had to be present in the beginning, in order for the universe to get started, that irreducible minimum is certainly extremely simple. By definition, explanations that build on simple premises are more plausible and more satisfying than explanations that have to postulate complex and statistically improbable beginnings. And you can’t get much more complex than an Almighty God!

d.d.

Posted by don davey on 22/07/07 at 11:11 PM

98.
The last attempt was obviously not by me , and i did give credit to the author, however it seems to have been deleted for some reason.
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 23/07/07 at 06:36 PM

Well Justa
Include love and you’ll have all 3!
regards
Ozzie

Posted by Ozziepa on 23/07/07 at 11:43 PM

Don Davey
You obviously feel so strongly that you have no feelings of your own, only those of Richard Dawkins and Co. which you quote more copiously than I do the Bible and….which you and I will have to agree to differ ovef…me anyway.
Too angry and aggessive for me, I must admit

Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 23/07/07 at 11:50 PM

Hey Don
Did you read what I said previously? That is that people do lots in His Name, but that doesn’t mean He agrees.
Tell me where Jesus did any of this. Those who say they follow Him will be judged by Him (including you for He is your God even if you don’t accept it)NOT BY WHAT THEY SAY BUT WHAT THEY DO. ie Jesus said ‘why do you call Me Lord, Lord and don’t do the things that I SAY). You would have to be an idiot to believe the IRA and the others are followers of Jesus when they blow people up. That doesn’t descredit Him, it discredits them.
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 23/07/07 at 11:57 PM

Justa
If you fail to see what is the real value of hope, the you are, by definition, without hope! (as says Ephesians chapter 2 verse 2ff.
We agree, though you mightn’t agree.
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 24/07/07 at 12:02 AM

Well Justa
and Stormy
I bid you adieu
Thank you for you input
(I suspect we’ll meet again)

Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 24/07/07 at 12:12 AM

Don
I apologise if I’ve misread your emotion. I also appreciate the effort you’ve gone to with the keyboard and the presentation of your arguments.

Interesting that you/the author believe we came from one human ancestor. Had a linguist friend who said the same from his investigations regarding languages. ie that a common source was evident.

Is it true that many of the fossils contain the insides, scales, etc of the animal? Suggesting a sudden impact? ie nowadays fish who are lucky enough to die of natural causes float then sink slowly, and often the flesh, sometimes all of the animal, may be devoured and sometimes just the bone is left on the bottom of the ocean but rarely the whole animal is covered by sediment?

Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 24/07/07 at 10:48 AM

ozzie how much of your weekly income does your church request ching ching suckers.If all religeons were totaly banned all wars would cease and we would live in paradice.Have faith get high on god my arse ching ching suckers..

Posted by steve on 24/07/07 at 08:37 PM

Don

#100 “in The fossils tell us that life has been evolving on Earth for more than 3,000 million years.”

You seem to be unaware of what the evolutionists today are saying.

For instance, take Dr David Pilbeam of the Boston Natural History Museum (he has considerable expertise in palaeoanthropology (the study of fossil man)).

Dr Pilbeam wrote an article for Human Nature magazine, June 1978, entitled, ‘Rearranging Our Family Tree’.

In that article he reported that discoveries since 1976 had shaken his view of human origins and forced a change in ideas of man’s early ancestors. Dr Pilbeam’s previous views were wrong about tool use replacing canine teeth, evidence for which was totally lacking. He did not believe any longer that he was likely to hit upon the true or correct story of the origin of man. He repeated a number of times that our theories have clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual data. Too often they have reflected only what we expected of them.

In an interview with Luther Sutherland he discussed the above article.

He said it was not due to the discovery of only one particular specimen, but the recovery of various materials made him realize that his previous statements, which had been made so adamantly, were really based on very little evidence. Because they were based on so little evidence, he began to wonder why he had held them so strongly. It made him think about the nature of scientific thinking, and this precipitated a very profound change in his approach to analysing data. He said that many of the statements made in the field of human origins had ‘very little to do with the real data and a great deal to do with unstated assumptions’. He thought this was true not only of his field but, ‘Much of what is said in other areas, I think, is also highly speculative’.

Or take Dr Colin Patterson

Dr Colin Patterson, a senior palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, agreed about the lack of fossil evidence connecting man with a lower primate. In answer to the question, ‘What do you think of the australopithecines as man’s ancestors?’, Dr Patterson replied, ‘There is no way of knowing whether they are the ancestors to anything or not.’ The above was largely quoted from Luther Sunderland’s book, Darwin’s Enigm a: Fossils and Other Problems. This book takes a refreshingly different line from other creationist books on the fossil problem.

Now take what has been typical statements from evolutionists and taught in schools, colleges etc.

‘The most direct evidence that evolution has occurred is presented in the study of the fossils.’

‘The gradual development of life revealed by the fossil record has been called evolution.’

‘Fossils help to build up a connected story of the past and show the parade of life through the ages.’

‘Our knowledge of the history of life stems largely from the study of the fossils.’

‘One of the main lines of investigation that reveals the time course of past evolution is paleontology, the study of fossils.’

There has been a sustained examination of these teachings from a number of creation scientists over the years.

It would appear now as though the evolutionists are back pedalling on these claims now. For instance:

Consider New Scientist, 25 June 1981, in an article entitled ‘Who doubts Evolution’: ‘The Evidence for Evolution simply does not depend upon the fossil record’.

‘A major source of confusion in analysing the creationist argument is the muddling of the distinction between evolution as fact versus evolution as theory.’

The author later on in the article talks about: ‘… the false idea that the fossil record provides an important part of the evidence that Evolution took place… No good Darwinian’s belief in evolution stands on the fossil evidence for gradual evolution so nor will his belief fall by it.’

This author then, plainly states that the fossil evidence is no longer important—in fact, it doesn’t matter what you find in the fossil record, it will never contradict evolution anyway. The author of the article also has some new advice for creationists: ‘If the creationists want to impress the Darwinian establishment, it will be no use prating on about what the fossils say.’

Clearly, the evolutionists have adopted a worldview that evolution is fact in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Ross

Posted by Ross Petersen on 24/07/07 at 08:50 PM

105 @ 106
i never did, nor will i now attempt to argue the toss over religion ,as religious zealots have never, or will ever be open to common sense discussion,so to each his own! just, don’t try shoving it down my neck. simple really !
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 24/07/07 at 10:54 PM

Ross Peterson, typical of those who live within delusion, you can’t answer fact, so resort to another tack of deception, called creationism. It’s irrelevant as to what science, ideology or illusional theory you come up with that can be shown to be right to a degree, there will always be something missing. That’s the nature of evolution, however in this day and age and not back in the 1970-1990’s there is enough evidence from all forms of life to show the most obvious state of our universe is evolution. Don Davey’s post didn’t refer to human evolution, but was referring to fossils in general. But you avoid the reality of what he states, and indulge in delusional perspectives to avoid facing fact

Your creationist theory and your biblical theory falls down when you see the evolution within the natural universe, how does creationism explain how humans have come from living in caves without any technology, to where we are now. Biblical theory states everything was designed and created in perfection, yet that is not the case of anything in existence. If you were born in the image of your mythical god, then you would have those attributes of that god, hold all the knowledge you would attain in your life and wouldn’t learn anything new, as learning is evolution in action.

Your post doesn’t provide any evidence for creationism, or for your god being real, ever existed, or is loving and caring. Provide some verifiable factual evidence to support your stance, rather than denial and illusional conjecture.

Hi Steve
Another angry person who is obviously full of discrimination against christians. My church doesn’t request a regular portion of my income but I do voluntarily give to support their work among orphans in Africa, Thailand and India.
Our head pastor has just resigned to take up the position of CEO of Compassion who also work among orphans overseas. Tim Costello does likewise.
Do you support anything like that or just look after number one?
And as for religion being banned, read my comment in # 95. You could enter your paradise by simply moving to Bejing or Moscow.
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 25/07/07 at 04:45 PM

don
I was simply responding to your statements in #98

‘If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves in a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that’s okay, he’s God. He can do whatever he wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of morality, decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond recognition by the very book that is supposedly preaching the opposite.
d.d ‘
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 25/07/07 at 04:53 PM

Stormy
I notice that you have chosen not to comment on any of D.D’s contributions? Anything to add to

‘It is surely far more reverent, as well as more scientifically sensible, to take the evidence at face value. All living creatures are cousins of one another, descended from one remote ancestor that lived more than 3,000 million years ago.’

Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 26/07/07 at 09:38 AM

Don
You’ve mentioned a lot about science. What do you define as science?
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 26/07/07 at 10:08 AM

Stormbay

#113 “Biblical theory states everything was designed and created in perfection, yet that is not the case of anything in existence. If you were born in the image of your mythical god, then you would have those attributes of that god, hold all the knowledge you would attain in your life and wouldn’t learn anything new, as learning is evolution in action.”

Well it is true that everything was was designed and created in perfection. And it is true that obviously there are many things that are wrong in this world today.

What appears to be missing in your statement, is the fact that all the current evil we see today is a direct result of the fall in the Garden of Eden.

My comment was not intended to be an exhaustive treatise on the fossil record or a wide ranging proof of creation, but I dont mind talking about that a bit.

Given that there is a large amount of ground to cover, I will make a number of posts over a period of time probably covering topics such as biochemistry, physics, astronomy, chemistry etc.

Ross

Posted by Ross Petersen on 26/07/07 at 10:51 AM

113

Men in caves. You find them there today. Rather than evolve from an accidental creation (mud and lightening perhaps), they actually devolved there fro the lighted people of Eden, made as a purposeful creation by a being even more awesom than chemistry.

Stormboy I have just noted that you are limited to intellect and close your doors to the might of your visionary potential (unlike Einstein).

Science is ‘the understanding of ...’. The process of science in mainstream discounts the existence of intelligence as a possible agent in our occurrence. There’s a dvd that is probably readily available. It’s by scientists who found that by including intelligence as a aprtial cause then evolution becomes fundamentally flawed. They observe, and I note nobody moaned about my previous post on this, through electron microscaopes that we are in fact made up of thousands of tiny little machines. Get the dvd or google inteligent design or something. it’s around somewhere. Maybe Koorong Books in Criterion St in Hobart.

What!! Immediate scepticism ... to close to what you have been fighting against!!

Posted by Cupboardbound on 26/07/07 at 12:57 PM

Are you pretending to be knowledgeable, Mr Petersen? I’m still twiddling my thumbs waiting for you to cough up your verifiable proof in support of the ridiculous claims you made all the way back in post #48.

Conveniently forgotten, have we?

Posted by Cameron on 26/07/07 at 09:44 PM

Ozziepa re:#117.

I don’t really agree all living things come from one ancient ancestor, it could be true, however there is no evidence to really support this, sure it may be all living things have a base genetic and DNA code, but I haven’t read this. If all living things have the same original DNA, then it could be because the original DNA of all life was the same across the planet, developing differently at the beginning of each life form. I am more inclined to believe that original DNA was present across the planet and things developed according to their individual environmental requirements. But there is nothing to support a creation event by a deistic being, who created the entire universe. I’m sure once we can search through the universe and analyse the living beings that inhabit it, we will find all things have a base beginning, very much the same. That would be because this universe is an enclosed dimensional system and influences from other dimensions, would need to be altered to fit the requirements of this one.

I’m more interested in where we are going, not where we’ve come from, sure it’s interesting, but the future is the only thing that matters. As to a god, sorry its to infantile and primitive to have any real chance of being a possibility. God is for those who haven’t got the brains or strength to take full responsibly for their lives and how they conduct them. I’ve yet to meet any god follower, who lives in a way that enhances this planet. They are to egocentric self-centred and self righteously ignorant of reality, to know the truth or anything outside their delusions that block the proper functioning of their minds.

Ross Petersen,

“What appears to be missing in your statement, is the fact that all the current evil we see today is a direct result of the fall in the Garden of Eden.”

Come on, there weren’t nuclear bombs in the mythical Eden, supermarkets, battery hens and feed lots, no christianity, islam nor Judaism. No cars, no houses, no doctors or technology. There is really nothing from your imaginary Eden that’s in existence today, except for the ongoing delusion in a mythical god.

Cupboardbound,

“Science is ‘the understanding of ...’. The process of science in mainstream discounts the existence of intelligence as a possible agent in our occurrence. “

Intelligence is evolution, not stagnated mythical dogma, which is a lack of intelligence. “Visionary potential” is in looking forward to reasonable possibilities becoming probabilities, according to the observable logical and verifiable evidence. Totally the opposite to a primitive, illogical superstition believing in an all powerful god, which demands people keep their minds firmly in the past. Where you all fail, is to provide any verifiable evidence that this belief in god, has enhanced and progressed this planet. Quite obviously, according to all the verifiable evidence, god has been a complete and utter failure. Nothing but debauchery, destruction of life and the planet, have occurred since the inception of god. Its followers live gluttonous lives, steeped in material self indulgence, constantly fighting each other to gain control and be right. They are the facts, if not then provide verifiable evidence to the contrary.

Posted by stormbay on 27/07/07 at 05:28 PM

Christianity was developed by the romans as a way of controling the cultures that they decimated for profit. The old testament is more jewish and muslim…the romans re wrote the new testament to suit their millitary society only a few hopelesly brainwashed sheep still believe these lies..I do donate to several charities and enviromental causes..ps information is power hence the early christian book burning and the E.B shielding their sheep from any outside info..no info just sheep

Posted by steve on 28/07/07 at 07:32 PM

I if all you God botherers want to worship something ,then how about humanity ! pure and simple and all its fantastic achievements ! mostly in the past 100 or so years and who knows whats lurking round the corner
If i told you people that there were fairies at the bottom of my garden ,or that a ghost lived in my roof, you would want to commit me ! and what you are doing with a book that was written many years after the death of Christ ! ( who i concede DID exist , but as little more than a Billy Graham or perhaps a David Karesh of his time ) and was written at the time of the beginnings of civilized human awakening is just plainly ludicrous and quite dangerous in this world of 2007.
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 29/07/07 at 07:47 PM

Don

God is bothered about us not by us.
Humanity is what is destroying the planet & mostly that started in the last 100 years. Verifiable and true is the fact that as we have gotten more intelligent we’ve also gotten more destructive.

Not long ago you didn’t have to lock your doors and windows, there was little drug taking, HIV infection, etc,etc. Humanity is not fit to be worshipped.

They do what is described in Romans chapter 1, which includes worshipping the creation more than the creator. Humanity is on a downward slippery slope not an upward climb.

Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 30/07/07 at 12:38 AM

Steve

Where’s the verifiable proof for your belief that the Romans invented christianity. (I don’t speak as one who shares the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church)

Good to hear that you support charities.

None of you have yet agreed to comment on Mother Theresa, why?

Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 30/07/07 at 12:41 AM

Don

Without entering into the same kind of angry language you use, what is your hope for the future?

Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 30/07/07 at 12:43 AM

Don

Thank you for your explanation. In post 101 you said

The fact that the genetic code is the same in all living creatures overwhelmingly suggests that all are descended from one single ancestor.

How do you reconcile that with what you say in 122

I don’t really agree all living things come from one ancient ancestor, it could be true, however there is no evidence to really support this, sure it may be all living things have a base genetic and DNA code, but I haven’t read this.

Also what do you define as scientific process?

Experimentation and observation?

Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 30/07/07 at 01:01 AM

(128)
Ossie !
(122) is not my post, have a Valium and a cuppa and a little lie down, and may i ask ? are you of the male , or female persuasion ?
D.D.

Posted by don davey on 30/07/07 at 11:50 AM

Ozziepa, I addressed the question of your mother Theresa in post 93, I can add pages more to support what I posted, even documented from the Vatican deification committee hearing. It’s you who haven’t commented on my answer, nor other questions I and others have asked you and your fellow religious. You keep trying to avoid answering by asking more dumb questions, intelligent people are aware of all the ploys the religious use, to try and deceive or manipulate discussions down to the level where they can have things on their terms, illusional and pure fantasy. The techniques are so infantile and primitive, anyone with half a brain can see through them, that’s why religion is dying, like all primitive violent cultures, its had it and about time to. Its the same with your post 128, it was I who posted 122, not Don.

Your statement, things have only got bad in the last 100 years is another fantasy, throughout the history of Europe, which has mainly been christian, jew and muslim over the last 1500 years, nothing but war, violence and barbaric debauchery, has been carried out upon the people by the philosophy of god. The difference now is that gods followers were able to travel the world and forcibly convert, wipe out or enslave the indigenous peoples, now they all follow god. Guess what, they are all in a state of turmoil, corruption, violent conflict, suppressive stupid morals, no rights and god factional war. All god converted or controlled countries, are the same. Name some that aren’t.

Posted by stormbay on 30/07/07 at 04:52 PM

The romans used the fable of christ to control the many cultures they all but wiped out they did this by crucifing and burning people alive there are many history books that contain these facts it was a verry efective way of controling the sheep so tell me ossie will any roman catholics be in your heaven any jews or muslims or just your little flock of true believers.. what a joke and you didn,t have anything to say about the book burning at about the same time as the romans edited the bible to suit themselves.Have you got a coment on the crusaides or the witch burning PS what church do the true believers belong to and where did the souls of the pre contact new guinea natives go if they went to heaven then your church is just not needed..

Posted by steve on 30/07/07 at 07:49 PM

Don, Stormy, Steve
Too aggressive for me. Reckon all 3 of you could start a war on your own? Seems like you turn to ridicule and demeaning language to try and talk up your own importance instead of just sticking to a rational debate without all the emotion you have.
I’ve answered questions and could answer more but think I might call it a day.
By the way, you still haven’t answered a few of mine. eg What is your hope for the future?
Steve, I’ve already pointed out that Jesus Himself said ‘Why do you call me Lord..but do not do the things I say?’
The true believers are those who do, not those who ‘say & do not’.
Jesus was crucified by religious zealots. He agrees with you. Religion kills but the Spirit gives life.
I’ve attended a number of different churches and found true believers, and the other kind, in most of them.
My apologies for getting the author & post number wrong Don
Regards
Ozziepa (not ma)
(off for a cuppa)

Posted by Ozziepa on 31/07/07 at 04:09 PM

Steve
Read Romans 1 for an answer regarding the New Guinea natives. ‘the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen so that they (& you) are without excuse.’
Most simple living peoples realize their is a greater being responsible for creation and worship a deity.
Only those ‘who professing themselves to be wise, became fools’ have a problem. That’s also in Romans 1
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 01/08/07 at 10:55 AM

Slavery was given the green light because the churches said that black people do not have souls..I was trying to save you ozzie but you are just too far gone bye bye next time I am at the pub i will pray for your soul..

Posted by steve on 01/08/07 at 07:48 PM

stormy me old alchemical wrestler;
it’s in sensitive perception. intelligence whether He evolved or not exists as the only justification for the mosaic of life - the matrix, platform, commonground, motivation, joint consciousness, .....

don’t be clouded by the huge amount of fake and deluded churchery.

understand that for some reason as you say there’s something wrong in the world and its not getting any better (it seems) by this deluded churchery nor by the likes of yourself (people who find only small and occasional fellowship in their kind and only occasional joint refined productivity).

freak of nature, highly evolved or sent Son jesus christ of nazareth said and did a few things - a few incredible and unforgettable things. there’s been a book referred to in these posts by ossieman and a dvd by me. take them, read them.

until you do - fuck off. ... if you’ll understand that as a kind encouraging request.

cheers

Posted by Cupboardbound on 02/08/07 at 09:49 AM

Ozziepa, I thought you’d bidden us goodbye in post 108. Anyway, I’ve read Romans 1 and I reckon it has no place in the Bible. It should never have been included among the authoritative scriptures. How do you justify its inclusion?

Posted by Justa Bloke on 02/08/07 at 12:17 PM

Ozziepa, There is nothing more aggressive on this planet, than the followers of god. Evidenced by 3500 years of continious war, carried out by gods followers of all factions.

For some one so religiously deluded, it’s amazing how little you know of the original text and meaning of Romans 1 and probably the rest of the bible. Can you tell me where about in Romans 1, appears both your statements. There is nothing of what you have quoted within it. I’d say your quoting from a copy of many copies of a plagiarised false and heavily altered American delusional bible. Why is it those following this violent barbarity, have no idea of the origins nor content of the only original, another copy of many changed copies written by scribes. Actually the naming of Romans doesn’t appear in the original document, they were all anonymous. The church put the names to them. Again you try to support your fantasy by using the bible as evidence supporting the bible, then yo expect sane people to accept your deceptive delusion.

You ask, “what is your hope for the future”. Hope is a never happening thing, just like the promises of the mythical yahweh. The future is what you create it to be, if you live in empty hope, that’s what your future is empty hope. You either create your future, or you become a victim of it. When you have hope in god, all you will get is repeat of the past outcomes of god, very well documented in both bible fairy tales. You still haven’t answered the question, what has the belief in yahweh, jesus or mohamed achieved that’s been positive for the planet and all that live on it.

Posted by stormbay on 02/08/07 at 04:58 PM

Cupboardbound, If you’d read through the posts, instead of frothing at the mouth, you’d note I’ve read Josh Mcdowells book and studied his ministry. Anyone with half a brain, the ability to read coherently, rationally and use unbiased research, would see what he has written, as a delusional load of fictional rubbish. The same with your intelligent design DVD, pure fiction, designed for the gullible unevolved superstitious slaves of the mythical yahweh. You continue displaying your intellect, by posting ongoing meaningless drivel. I understand your inability to comprehend reality and it’s associated verifiable facts, as you display a total lack of knowledge of how those not entrapped or reliant on violent superstitious ideologies, conduct their lives. Sadly for you, you get it wrong all the time. You can see the empty despair of monotheists, as they struggle to stop being consumed by ignorance and fear. Your final sentence eminently displays the truth of gods followers and how they express the myths supposed love and caring attitude, just as it has been displayed over the last 3500 years.

Posted by stormbay on 03/08/07 at 12:39 PM

If god created man out of his own immage he should be sacked this is a free country and i dont believe in any god religeon is mans worst enemy and if you knock on my door i will try to convert you real quick. PS if you run out of rolley papers bible paper and a dab of honey works a treat bit thin for dunny paper but will do in an emergency..see you can get high on god ..

Posted by steve on 03/08/07 at 08:55 PM

I admit before I say anything else that with 139 posts I haven’t read through them all, just the last 20 or so.
My comment to the religious amongst us, rather than question, as I’ve noted they haven’t answered any of the curly ones, just tried to shift the debate down to a lower level, is a very simple one.
Whether there is or is not a God, or whatever you want to call your supreme being, is clearly completely unanswerable. Clearly it is a matter of faith, of choosing to believe, or not to believe.
However, what I find incredulous, is those that rely on the bible as if it were proof of God’s existence! So, bit of a newsflash here, might be a shock: -The bible WAS WRITTEN BY MAN.
Therefore, as far as I can see, nothing in it really has any relevance to God whatsoever, and therefore, logically, nothing in it can be used to justify faith. Including the Garden of Eden.
Some of it’s content might well be a good idea or a good story -but then there are good and inspirational stories around that humankind has written from time to time.
That still has nothing to do with God, or the origin of the species. Those who know their history know that all the available evidence says that humans have mistreated their own kind in brutal ways for as long as we have existed.
The biggest way used to justify this has been religion. And books written by men.

Posted by Toby Rowallan on 04/08/07 at 12:18 AM

okay Stormbay, youve read them so I’m back again with my poor intellect, which seems to be my problem in your eyes. With an intellect like this I have no hope, as you say.

I see that life begins not in the mud but in the imagery of intelligence at the other end which has given purpose to the mud.
Cupboardbound

Posted by Cupboardbound on 04/08/07 at 12:13 PM

(140) ” whether there is or is not a God, or whatever you want to call your supreme being, is clearly completely unanswerable. Clearly it is a matter of faith, of choosing to believe, or not to believe.”
Why is it that many of us assume that there is a SUPREME being ! “mankind” ( is that politically correct ? ) with all of our failings , are the “supreme beings” so why the cringe.
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 05/08/07 at 12:50 AM

#

Fellow heathens ! in my long life on this planet i have found that without exception i have never been able to win an argument with any of gods people ,not because i wasn’t right ! but because they always revert to mindless gobblegook when cornered, i add that i have read the book ! unlike most of those who profess to have done so and preach its worth ,and if they were to actually do so ,then if they had any semblance of grey matter, they could do little else but consider how gullible they had been.
d.d.
Posted by don davey on 04/08/07 at 01:55 AM

Posted by don davey on 05/08/07 at 01:06 AM

To Stormbay,

As to a god, sorry its to infantile and primitive to have any real chance of being a possibility.(122)

“Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it… what is impossible with men is possible with god.”

Posted by 0omniscience=faith on 05/08/07 at 12:59 PM

Don Davey, you’ve won with the possessed monotheists, when they revert to gobble de gook. At that point, you’ve surpassed their intellectual understanding, so they revert to repetitive programmed dogma and fantasy in an attempt to confuse. Believe me, they have no answers and your right, 99% of them have no knowledge of their belief, except for their indoctrinated repetitive dogma.

You see that in posts in #142 and #144, nothing but avoidance, then reverting to dogma in a vain attempt to instil fear. There is no omnipotent being, no god, just primitive minds hell bent on enforcing their fear and superstition on others, to give them some form of feeling they are right. How you can be right in caring and loving, whilst your belief ravages and destroys the world, then enshrines those whose psychological make up is bordering on the psychopathic debauched, is beyond me. Its just so sad that they have been able to suppress so many people over the centuries, that’s because monotheistic religion held the reins of communications for so long.

The churches of the world were up in arms when the printing press was invented, then they were up in arms when they got telegraph them telephones. When computers started to become the norm, they were evil and when the Internet started, it was the work of the devil. Their fear of reality and evolutionary progress knows no bounds, yet they have not one shred of evidence to support their stance, except their plagiarised fictional biblical scripture. They are so problematic and infantile, they still think people are scared of, and will bow down to what they believe is the might of the bible. Yet it doesn’t even make good dunny paper.

Personally, I prefer Lord of the rings, for a meaningful and expressive book on how the world works and how to overcome it’s problems. As others have said, the bibles are books written by man and once you learn their true history and origins, you can see that they represent folk stories derived from other sources and mythologies. Just small things, can give you answers. The story of the birth of jesus, is actually a story of a reincarnation of a believed Buddha or holy man. The supposed sayings of jesus, can be found in Hindu and Buddhist texts written hundreds, even thousands of years before. The Vedic texts are an example. Just like you can find the old testament stories in Egyptian, Sumerian and Greek mythologies. Read the Epic of Gilgamesh and you’ll find lots of NT and OT in it, written long before monotheistic beginnings. Fuzzy logic, is the realm of the monotheist, or to be more honest, blind logic.

Posted by stormbay on 05/08/07 at 06:03 PM

Isn’t the title of this a little oxymoronic?

If they are brethren, they are not alone.
If they are alone, they are not brethren.

One of the things that I would like to know, can ‘The casting into Eternal fire’ be considered ‘A crime against Humanity’?

Posted by Gerry Mander on 05/08/07 at 06:48 PM

hi storm bay, I dont want to win any argument and i desire to know the truth. You seem alot more well read than i am and you seem to have a sharp mind. just from a very basic point of view the bible makes sense to me. The story of mans seperation from God and Gods way for men to be united with God again and God gets the glory! which seems to me to be the only way for man to be free from selfishness. There is a whole lot of stuff I dont know (history etc.)! even with the seemingly firm information that you present regarding the non validity of the bible, my concience tells me that I am not a perfect man and my soul reaches out for something bigger.I need awe. I dont see a place for awe in a Godless existence. How do you know there is no God? why is the notion of God so foolish? and why is the gospel of Jesus christ so powerful in changing hearts. I dont feel fear, hatred of men or anger in my heart. I feel immense gratitude and freedom and a scincere love for all men. But I also feel the old man of selfishness still wanting to reign. As for all the wars, violence and injustice in the world , the common denominator is not christians (who have often been instrumental in helping where help is needed) its not religion, its not atheists as some might say. It is mankind. People like you and me. Tell me, are you perfect? if you are not then you are just like every body else. Im not writing this to convert you(i wouldnt expect to ever do that. with al due respect) I want to discuss the truth with you and if you have sometjing to teach me I want to learn it.
kind regards. Adam.

Posted by 0omniscience=faith on 06/08/07 at 12:58 PM

#145. ‘you’ve won with the possessed monotheists, when they revert to gobble de gook.’

I always win with monotheists. There are so many incredible contradictions and so many glossed over bits that can never stand up to logic. They always revert to the sterotype answers of Faith and Prayer.

“Pray, n: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.”

- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

“Faith, n: A commitment without trial or evidence.”

- BD (1935 - Still alive.)

Posted by Gerry Mander on 06/08/07 at 07:41 PM

0omniscience=faith .
From a basic point of view, just about every book ever written makes sense, but it doesn’t mean its truth, in most cases its supposition, fact or creative fantasy. You seem to conveniently believe, if your not enslaved to superstition and mythology, your life is empty. However its the other way round, your religion hasn’t invented anything, all it’s claims have been stolen from other previous writers. It’s boring, repetitive, dogmatic, suppressive and controlling. You can believe what you like, the mental hospitals of the world are full of gods followers, as are the graves.

Mankind is not the problem, the ideologies of the primitive superstitious are the problem. I, like many others are working towards perfection, as we see perfection as the art of change. Our universe is in constant change and evolution, if we try to emulate that responsibly, in our own minuscule lives, then we are reaching for perfection.

Your post, reeks of someone bent on denying responsibility for the results of your primitive ideologies, displayed outcomes for the world. The concept god, has ripped the heart out of the planet and all who inhabit it, through it’s constant factional, destructive conflicts and it’s war against evolution, reality and truth. You can only discuss truth, with verifiable evidence, not verifiable fiction. Your bibles and the koran, are verifiable fiction. You can’t even verify any of your interpretations of the stories or origins of the biblical mythical fantasies, yet non believers can. If you want to learn the truth, then you seek it out, all of it. Not just what suits you, or allows you to creep back into your illusionary comfort zone of dogma. The internet has opened the world of knowledge to everyone, all it requires is an open mind, a good firewall and then experience it. All the known evidence is probably available somewhere on it by now. My knowledge of monotheism and cultural anthropology, is because I wanted to know the truth many years ago and I found it. I wish we had the internet back then, as I had to travel discern truth from fiction. There is not one single piece of evidence to support there being a god, or a jesus as depicted by the christian religions. They’ve tried to invent it, lied about it, yet just slipped deeper into denial. But you can’t prove what is not verifiable truth and that’s where you will always fail.

Posted by stormbay on 06/08/07 at 07:47 PM

well stormbay, where would we go if we all went your way!? ... and where might we go if all the intelects harmonised!? .... where we have come is a close answer to the first question. and where god would have us is an answer to the second, but only if we would wake up to them (father, son and spirit). if we don’t wake up ‘mankind’ will be as stormbay is. ... can you imagine a whole world of stormbay mummies, daddies, kiddies, aunties and uncles all trying to harmonise to match even the order of drops of water in a puddle? o=f has a point about children and unresearched understanding. step behind your mind and look upon your intellect. compare the man and the woman, the child and the peaking dynamic homosuperior, the child and the well-lived man at death, the savage and the dove, the cat raised in an environment of only horizontal lines and the one raised in verticals, the seed and the tree, the functioning potential of a beehive of people and the numero uno of the idi amin. what guidence do you offer one who sees that the intelect needs the understanding, the mystery, the guidance, the expression ... the knowledge of it’s antithesis and the faith/confidence in the continuity of events and circumstance that is all of life ... and death?

the evolution of flesh to mind is a primitive concept ... the transcendence of life from the flesh to the heavenly is a godly reality.

how are your emotions stormy? are they steady, volitile, popular, empassioned. do you have passions. what are they?

would you like a cup of tea sometime?

would you have one with some fiends of your own and some others who too are non-violent, who find the religious violence repugnent and who stand strong in the body of Jesus Christ?

Posted by Cupboardbound on 06/08/07 at 09:42 PM

(150)
LIKE I SAID , BLOODY GOBBLE DE GOOK !
D.D.

Posted by DON DAVEY on 07/08/07 at 12:01 AM

Steve
#134 You might find it interesting to read John Newton’s book. He was the guy who used to captain a slave trader and then came to know Jesus & wrote Amazing Grace.
Again I say, (about the 4th time), those who do, not say, are the real church, as Jesus said ‘why do you call Me Lord, Lord & do not do the things I say…depart from Me you…I never knew you).
If I see you in the pub I’ll shout you a drink.
(expecting a huge response to that)
Regards
Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 07/08/07 at 08:55 AM

Justa
#136 Sorry still with you, left for a little while but can’t resist another response.
Why should I ? justify Romans 1’s inclusion to you? I didn’t do the including & you don’t believe in the scriptures that you puzzlingly describe as authoritative. Which scriptures do you see as being such?
Regards
Ozzie

Posted by Ozziepa on 07/08/07 at 09:03 AM

( 106.109.111.114.116.118.125.127.128.132.)
Ozzie you appear to have singled me out as being angry and non objective ,however please look back through the post’s and you will find that i do not attack you personally as some do, you are certainly entitled to your beliefs as is anyone but when you try pushing those beliefs onto others with only the Bible and its teachings for your credibility amongst the wealth of scientific historic discovery and ACTUAL artifacts in our possession, then your time is completely wasted among more realistic minded folk, and of course the evolution fact is continually changing ,and why ? because more and more is being unearthed each and every day, its called DISCOVERY in order to bear out further bolster the facts.
Let me relate an instance where i asked an individual , “are you a body parts donor”? whereupon the answer was an emphatic no ! and after much persuasion she explained that she would not like to donate her eyes because she may need them in the hereafter, now ! i was under the impression that your god was only interested in souls ,i also read an article in the readers digest which noted a poll which showed that only a tiny minority of donors are of the Christian faith which i find reprehensible .
By the way i don’t believe you answered my query ,as to your gender or do you prefer to not say,which of course is your right.
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 07/08/07 at 02:03 PM

Stormy

#93

‘Provide evidence for any verifiable benefit this debauched belief has brought to the planet.’

Do you think the Salvos have done anything worthwhile for the planets inhabitants?

(together with for example #66 where I mentioned
‘The church I attend has 500 attending regularly, most of whom are youth (unlike me). Their sincerity is seen in their work among the homeless, drug addicted (running a program called ‘drug proofing your kids’, work among orpans in Africa, Thailand & other places.

Do you reckon Tim Costello and World Vision are doing any good for orphans around the world, or that he did any good when a St Kilda pastor working among the down and outs?

#137

‘There is nothing more aggressive on this planet, than the followers of god. Evidenced by 3500 years of continious war, carried out by gods followers of all factions.’

That statement has been responded to many times by me (eg #62 #90 & #132) but I’ll say it again. ITS NOT WHAT A PERSON SAYS, BUT DOES, THAT REALLY DEFINES THEIR BELIEFS

Jesus said ‘why do you call Me Lord,..and do not the things I say…depart from Me I never knew you’

I’ll also repeat, IT WAS THE RELIGIOUS WHO CRUCIFIED JESUS.

A present day example might be Quick and the Labour party? (tho’ I wouldn’t rest my case on that)

and

‘For some one so religiously deluded, it’s amazing how little you know of the original text and meaning of Romans 1 and probably the rest of the bible. Can you tell me where about in Romans 1, appears both your statements. There is nothing of what you have quoted within it. I’d say your quoting from a copy of many copies of a plagiarised false and heavily altered American delusional bible.’

Play the ball, not the man & what version would you like for my quotes from Romans 1.

Verses 19-23 in the New King James version read

‘because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.’ (see online at http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=52&chapter=1&version=50)

#145

‘you’ve won with the possessed monotheists, when they revert to gobble de gook’

Who says? Who gave you the authority to pronounce Don a winner because of what you describe as gobblydegook? If you guys determine the winner then we’re wasting our time.

I’m also curious as to your opinion of the polytheists?

Also linking #142 and #144 together as monotheists might cause Don to tell you to have a valium, a cuppa and a good lie down (#129)

Don

#154

I don’t single you out, but included you with others who are speaking very emotively (see for eg #115 & #132)

‘have a Valium and a cuppa and a little lie down’ your comment in #129) playing the ball or the man?

Should I tell you to do likewise for attributing #111 to me?

Seems to me there is a deliberate attempt to belittle and discredit those of opposing beliefs rather than keep the debate unemotional, and by inference trying to belittling the beliefs they hold?

I don’t try to push my beliefs onto others. I thought it was a dialogue we were having about the relative merits or otherwise of our beliefs.
Do you consider that you are trying to push your beliefs onto me?

‘with only the Bible and its teachings for your credibility amongst the wealth of scientific historic discovery and ACTUAL artifacts in our possession’

Do you regard the Dead Sea Scrolls as actual artifacts?

I carry an organ donor card in my wallet but can’t answer for other ‘christians’.

why the question about male, female?
(which i thought i’d answered at the end of #132 when i said i’m ozziepa not ma)

Welcome Gerry

‘I always win with monotheists’ (#148) Pronouncing yourself a winner. Congratulations are in order? Would have thought you’d look to an independent umpire to make that pronouncement?

If not, we might as well desist and then you wouldn’t have an opposing view to debate with. Is that how you’d like it?

Regards

Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 07/08/07 at 10:44 PM

Ozziepa, it’s you who were justifying statements by referring to Romans 1. Therefore it was you who appeared to be considering it as an authoritative text. I just wondered why.

I consider nothing written by humans to have any more authority than anything else written by humans (which is why I have trouble with a lot of secular laws), but I accept that most Christians regard those writings which are grouped together as The Bible to be the basis of their beliefs and to provide a guide for how they live.

If you are not one of these Christians, I apologise for having assumed you were.

As for getting angry, well I reckon one is justified in getting angrier when a priest rapes a child than when your average pedophile does, because your average pedophile does not claim to be a spokesperson on morality.

I don’t care whether someone is a monotheist or a polytheist, it’s the ‘-theist’ part that’s the problem.

Posted by Justa Bloke on 08/08/07 at 03:44 PM

Ozziepa wrote,
“Steve
Read Romans 1 for an answer regarding the New Guinea natives. ‘the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen so that they (& you) are without excuse.’
Most simple living peoples realize their is a greater being responsible for creation and worship a deity.
Only those ‘who professing themselves to be wise, became fools’ have a problem. That’s also in Romans 1
Regards
Ozziepa”

“Play the ball, not the man & what version would you like for my quotes from Romans 1.
Verses 19-23 in the New King James version read
‘because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.’ (see online at http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=52&chapter=1&version=50”

Ozziepa,
Posting another version, yet failing to answer my question, or explaining why you posted something that doesn’t appear within the original text, is pathetically infantile and primitive. Unless I’m mistaken, you go to an evangelistic, (pentecostal) church and not one in Tas. The religious didn’t supposedly crucify the mythical jesus, it was the followers of Yahweh, the same god you and all monotheists follow. The only sane version of the NT bible stories, is the original Greek, or interlinear text. Not the Aramaic, Latin, English or American aberration.

“That statement has been responded to many times by me (eg #62 #90 & #132) but I’ll say it again. ITS NOT WHAT A PERSON SAYS, BUT DOES, THAT REALLY DEFINES THEIR BELIEFS “

That’s right, and what the followers of god do, is verified in 3500 years of violence, war, suppression and gluttonous destruction.. What christians, Jews, or muslims say or preach, is never verified in reality. More than 95% of the current world problems were caused by the followers of yahweh. All the problems of indigenous peoples of the world, have only occurred since their cultures were destroyed and they were forcibly converted to yahweh and jesus. Those cultures all survived many many thousands of years before the Jewish, christian, Islamic god invaded and destroyed their sustainable ways of life.

As to polytheists, just another primitive superstition. There are no gods, only the evolutionary future, which is ever unfolding and unending. To me, that leaves future understanding and experiences, exciting. Our universe consists of innumerable dimensions, so the only path I can see, is dimensional evolution. That can only be achieved by evolving beyond the primitive, suppressive and destructive ideologies, who have violently tried to drag evolutionary progress, back to the violent primitive past.

Even your last post of Romans 1, is far from the original. Typical monotheist, deception, denial and diversion.

Posted by stormbay on 08/08/07 at 07:48 PM

Thanks for clarifying Justa
I agree with the priest situation you referred to and share similar emotions about it to those you have. Jesus hated hypocrisy (those who say & do not or do the opposite) & I know of similar instances that haven’t hit the headlines, in other faiths. The religious of His day lorded it over the underlings & hated Him because He was rocking the boat.
Regards
Ozzie

Posted by Ozziepa on 08/08/07 at 08:24 PM

storm bay and any other atheists, how do you know their is no God?
why is having faith there is a God any more foolish than having faith there is not one?

how do you know there is no God?

Posted by 0omniscience=faith on 08/08/07 at 10:51 PM

Oomniscience=faith (post 159), it is not up to us to prove there is no god. I have never seen any evidence that there is one, so if you want me to believe there is one (or more), then it is up to you to show me that evidence.

Far more important, however, is that we must, for the good of the world and all its component parts (human and otherwise) live as if there is no god.

If you could, by some irrefutable evidence, convince me of the existence of a god or gods, then I would become an anti-theist instead of an atheist.

Posted by Justa Bloke on 09/08/07 at 11:09 AM

gday justa bloke, what evidence would you expect that would point to a God?
if you were convinced of the existence of a God, why on earth would you oppose him?? (he would be alot more powerful than you and also alot more right than you, being God who creates everything and therefore decides what is right and wrong or good and evil)

It seems you have a grudge against a God that you dont even think exists. Is it because of all the evil in the world? but surely the biggest evil that could be thought up is that of opposing the creator of the universe, wouldnt you agree?

Posted by 0omniscience=faith on 09/08/07 at 05:44 PM

151, I’m only writing a sort of imagery like an artist with a brush. There are few if any who can claim definitive knowledge of the technical origins of the Bible and I am not one of them. I merely am trying to appeal to the broader mind of stormbay in particular - to appeal to his greater mind that is not limited to the technicality of origins but rather the infinity behind the perfections of the here and now. ... you know, hwo cares about alpha and omega. what value in digging delving and arguing about it and then it’s all over. why assume the intelect is capable of adequate understanding. why not assume that the mind is so much more tham intellect. carlos castenda for example. simply let alpha and omega for what they are flow through the here and now for what it is - a fantastically intelligent complexity. Infinitely intelligent. And certainly there is no evidence to show this intelligence as being short of an item of God’s.

cats raised in horizontal world cant see verticality and vice versa.

wheras as i found my foundations shaking at these proatheist ascertions i am now happy that they are fundamentally flawed in their use of only a fragment of the mind when applying to an attitude to God.

‘’‘’‘break loose, break on through fellas.

Posted by cupboardbound on 09/08/07 at 06:02 PM

#162

“I merely am trying to appeal to the broader mind of stormbay in particular - to appeal to his greater mind that is not limited to the technicality of origins but rather the infinity behind the perfections of the here and now. “

“The perfections here and now”, are you totally deluded, tell me what’s perfect in the here and now. Growing world war by the factions of yahweh, massive poverty, a dying environment and biodiversity, ecological collapse. Destruction of indigenous cultures world wide, loss of freedoms as the religious right impose suppression, terror and more delusions upon the world. A perfect here and now, if you’re a follower of the warmongering destructive myth called Yahweh the god of war.

A broader mind is one that is open to all realities, not stuck in a primitive infantile dogmatic repetitive, superstitious myth of suppression, lies and violence. You can’t provide any verifiable evidence to say that anything associated with monotheism ever happened, nor that your mythical god exists, or ever did except within mythology. I think you mean Carlos Castenada, the magic mushroom man. Having read his books 30 years ago, I see nothing in what he said having any relationship to the veracity or reality of god. What it does relate to, is how quickly those with simple, gullible, unevolved minds are sucked in and become victims of theistic superstition and fear. Don Juan points that out many times.

You only need to use a fragment of your mind to deal with god, fact uses little effort in understanding and the facts for god, don’t exist. Delusion, which relies on deception and lies, requires all your mind, in order to convince yourself your not mentally disturbed. Personal relationships with a myth that died 2000 years ago, having conversations with nothing but your own mind. Believing you are right, against all the logic, evidence and rationale of reality, are the symptoms of someone with a weak gullible and sick mind. No wonder the mental facilities and war zones of the world, are full of gods believers.

Provide evidence for any verifiable benefit this debauched belief has brought to the planet.’

Why? Do you agree Tim Costello & the Salvos have?

Ozziepa

Posted by Ozziepa on 09/08/07 at 11:27 PM

I don’t have a grudge against a non-existent god. I am opposed to any way of thinking or acting that is predicated on the existence of any entity which is not part of the material world. And I believe that this opposition is necessary for the good of this material world (of which I and my fellow-humans are a part). It is all the more necessary when the actions that are so predicated affect the health, peace and welfare of sentient beings.

Oomniscience=faith, we can deal with who would win in a contest between me and this non-entity once you have delivered the proof of its existence. As for your question, “what evidence would you expect that would point to a God?” I wouldn’t expect any at all. You could, however, try to present some. It might be mildly amusing to contemplate it.

Posted by Justa Bloke on 10/08/07 at 10:11 AM

# 164 Ozziepa, unlike the religious, I didn’t conveniently avoid your question, I laughed at it. My mother and her family were salvo officers, my father a church of England deacon. So have a good understanding and background in monotheism, having had the bibles forced upon me until I could virtually quote them. I have always had respect and personal experience with the work the salvo’s do, especially in war zones, whilst the rest of gods representatives hide as far away from the front line as they can. However the salvo’s are very suppressive and insanely moralistic, displaying the same macabre and bizarre traits as other god factions in their organisation and private lives. There are more good deeds and help arising from non religious organisations and groups, than from the monotheists, who in the main are the original cause of most of the problems in our world.

As usual you only have subterfuge to support your claims, whilst the reality shows your belief plagiarises and try to hijack the caring deeds of normal people of the world, as just your own. Sadly delusion entraps gods followers in false deceitful illusions of grandeur, completely opposite to the factual reality. If your primitive mentally sick belief, hadn’t invaded and destroyed the indigenous peoples and cultures of the world, suppressed science, women and minorities throughout your history, then we would not have the many sad situations currently present on this planet. Whilst poverty and homelessness grows, your churches get richer and their leaders regale themselves in the trappings of materialism, mostly derived from the impoverished of the worlds slave labour. You may find it convenient to forget, the top 25 corporate exploiters of the worlds poor, are headed by the followers of god. Not only that, but the 3 top arms producing company heads, are all members of a monotheistic faction. Most if not all churches have shares and controls over companies and organisations that suppress exploit and impoverish people. Your famed mother Teresa is a blatant example of monotheisms debauched approach, on one hand you preach love and caring, one the other you invade, suppress and destroy. Historic cultural anthropology, provides all the evidence of violence, barbarity torture and genocide of monotheism, showing the true colours and hearts of your mythical god and its followers.

After all, in you biblical stories, wasn’t it your god yahweh, who flooded the world drowning all the living things that inhabited the planet. Wasn’t it your god in revelations, who states categorically, he will destroy with his angels all those who don’t bow down to him after the second coming. Isn’t it your god who intends to commit non believers to an eternity of torture. I could post 100’s of incidents of violence, vengeance, suppression genocide, incest, rape, pillage and murder all attributed to your gods desires and demands in your false books. Still not one benefit to this planet or the beings that live upon it can be attributed to your god or it’s followers, can be found. I’m not going to ask you to answer the myriad of question I and others have put to you and your ilk, as I’m fully aware you have none. It’s also a statistical fact, that only a very small proportion of donations to religiously controlled welfare groups, actually reaches those it is intended for. I’m sure with your knowledge, your aware of how much T Costello earns, the perks associated with his job and how he only raises his head for the camera’s and fluffs his feathers, claiming his divine goodness, whilst most the work is done by non believer volunteers, community and government donations. The only way churches survive, is because they are treated differently to other money making controlling organisations, with tax, rate and, accountability exemptions. Whilst churches and their leaders, live of the fat of the land, at the expense of those they are supposed to be helping. You never find humility within a church leader, or organisation, they are all filled with big headed psychopathic egocentric hedonism, hell bent on power and ego feather fluffing.

You still haven’t provided one benefit for this planet derived from monotheism, as usual, just denied, avoided and tried to change the goal posts. Sadly monotheists, have no idea of how to play the game of honesty, accountability or love for all life. Just look in their fridges, to see how much they care for for life above their gluttony, debauched enslavement and torture of the animals of the world, including humans. The billions killed in the name of god in the last 3500 years, is certainly a valid representation of the veracity of the mythical god yahweh.

Posted by stormbay on 10/08/07 at 11:19 AM

(62)
Sick, warped mind,mentally disturbed ? methinks ! Stormbay “protests too much” as genuine atheists have no need to revert to such personal and nasty jibes as he or she is lowering themselves.
Ozzie is entitled to his or her opinion without the need for those of us who do not share the faith to stoop to these lengths, just agree to disagree and leave it alone, as i stated earlier it is a topic which will never be resolved, as the myth has survived for some thousands of years and holds credibility and comfort for those who wish to believe.
Stormbay as i said ,you protest too much ! i,m not too sure that you are the master of your convictions ! take a Valium and a cuppa .
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 10/08/07 at 12:36 PM

(164)
ozzie, Tim Costello is i believe a genuinely good man like many, many others, and the fact that he is Christian has no bearing on that fact, he would still be a “genuinely good man” if he were a “non believer” being christian does not necessarily mean ,“he does good so he must be a christian” ! good people are born that way , bad people are born bad like some Catholic priests earlier referred to , to which i have some personal knowledge.
As for the salvo’s , well i just happen to know a guy who enjoys the camaraderie and what he is able to do, and guess what ! he is definitely a non believer in the existence of a god. d.d.

Posted by don davey on 10/08/07 at 01:08 PM

Stormy
Your statement

‘I, like many others are working towards perfection, as we see perfection as the art of change. Our universe is in constant change and evolution, if we try to emulate that responsibly, in our own minuscule lives, then we are reaching for perfection.
’ #149

Were you serious?

Ozziepa

Posted by kim valentine on 11/08/07 at 12:48 AM

As serious as I can be, with my limited understanding of universal reality. I’ve just finished reading about the new discoveries of the relationship between homo hablis and homo erectus, in our evolutionary path. It’s thrown their evolutionary theory out the window, but opened up many more avenues to investigate. As well as the recently discovered collision between 4 rather large galaxies 15 billion light years away, which is changing their evolutionary direction and squirting out stars in large streams into the abyss of open space. Rationally, I don’t see how anything can be more perfect than our evolving universe and the life forms that inhabit it, as it’s changing all the time.

When you consider monotheism has denied everything to do with science and space throughout it’s history, particularly space being uninhabited and no other planetary systems within the universe. Then consider the almost daily discovery of planetary systems and the mind boggling make up of some of these planetary systems, shows how much of an evolutionary mixing bowl our universe is, perfect. I feel sorry for those who have no grasp of rational logic, it must be so empty, having to rely on primitive mythology. Still I believe the chances of this universe being inhabited by beings many times more evolved than us, to be very high. I’m amazed your god, being the creator of all of this, hasn’t informed all those who have personal relationship with him or his son, of the wonders and variety of our universe. I sure everyone is aware of the amount of revelations coming from gods followers, revealing the secrets of our universe, as told to them by their all knowing god.

Posted by stormbay on 11/08/07 at 04:34 PM

so you are saying justa bloke, that if there was a God you wouldnt expect any evidence? so why do you put forward the complaint that you have never seen any evidence for a God, as a reason for not believing in one, when, if there was one you wouldnt expect any evidence? or are you implying you would be like a child puting his fingers in his ears saying, i’m not listening, i’m not listening? or did you misunderstand my question? the reason i asked it was because one of the stongest evidences for a God would be existence. I anticipated you would laughingly disagree. so i wanted to know what you would accept as evidence.

also do you agree with the last part of my post:

“surely the biggest evil that could be thought up is that of opposing the creator of the universe.”?

lastly, there is no need to wait until you have proved (i say “you have proved” because in the end to accept something we must prove it to ourselves) the existence of God to settle whether or not you would win, is there? cant we settle now, that you would not and could not win?

p.s. thanks for conversing. Im glad to discuss such crucial issues.

Posted by 0omniscience=faith on 11/08/07 at 08:23 PM

(171
Post 143 repeated ! and in the days when the bible was conceived with the information therein ,it was so at the time of the awakening of human intelligence ,and (they) at that time would have believed most of what was written , we today in the of 20007 fortunately , know better, for to admit to belief in same would give credence to , ghosts, goblins,children’s fairy tales , the scribblings of the likes of Stephen King,Dean Koontz,Lucifer, films such as the Exorcist etc,etc, however when it comes to Christianity , sadly , common sense falters under the burden of blind faith
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 12/08/07 at 12:14 AM

hi stormbay, hope my last post doesnt come across the wrong way. i dont wish to impose. someone once said “your best friend is the one who tells you the most truth”, or you might say the most important truth. so my motives are friendly. hopefully im not a deluded friend.

Posted by 0omniscience=faith on 12/08/07 at 09:47 AM

DD Stormy isnt viscious, he’s passionate and i think knows he’s dealing with grownups ... though the thought of an innocent shark passionately shredding its prey did come to mind at one point there. i understand that somebody can be passionate to disprove those who say follow Jesus or not only will you miss out but you’ll be hellbound. such words can be very annoying for a reason or two.

Stormbay; a couple of comments before i check out. i think for you there is something in the cat story, something in don juan’s acknowledgemnt of God and in carlos’ note that don juan wsnt quite content, something in your acknowledgement of perfection in the universe here and now on one hand and denial of it on the other hand. i have some idea of what you faced with your mum and dad and your search therefrom - a momentus task yet to complete on one hand and some simple acknowledgement on the other. my thoughts are with you in both your courage and your folly. cheerio for there are those better than me for you. seek further more for heart things than for knowledgeable things i reckon. ciao.

Posted by cupboardbound on 12/08/07 at 01:00 PM

O=f, you have misread my post #165. I said I wouldn’t expect that there would be any evidence that pointed towards the existence of a god, and I said so because there hasn’t been any yet. I am, however, prepared to be surprised. Until someone provides that evidence I shall continue to live as if there is no god. In the extremely unlikely case that someone is able to prove the existence of a god, my position would be one of implacable opposition to that god instead (as it is now) of just to the idea of it.

In any contest winning and losing are much less important than how you play the game, in this case how you live, so the question of who would win is of no interest to me. As I have said in other contexts: if you don’t fight you don’t win and if you do fight you lose; what is important is that you fight.

As for “the biggest evil’, I do not acknowledge the existence of any abstraction known as “evil”; there are only specific acts which are good or bad according to the effect they have on the material universe and its component parts (of which humans are a tiny and insignificant subset).

Posted by Justa Bloke on 12/08/07 at 03:49 PM

Gotta hand it to you Stormy
#170 ‘I’m amazed your god, being the creator of all of this, hasn’t informed all those who have personal relationship with him or his son, of the wonders and variety of our universe. I sure everyone is aware of the amount of revelations coming from gods followers, revealing the secrets of our universe, as told to them by their all knowing god.’

Your the humble one and not god’s followers?
Seems you might have had more than 1 valium with that cuppa.

Handy to be able to blow the evolutionary theory (which you’ve been preaching as fact) out the window and be able to start again.
Homo erectus and homo hablis? Fragments (which seem to be enough to paint a whole glowing picture) found in the same rock strata when they should’ve been separated by millions of years.
Would’ve thought that fitted the realms of fairy tales more so than the Biblical accounts you despise so much?

Science is about experimentation and observation, I would’ve thought, not making up a whole story from a few bone fragments.

Justa
# 175 ’ I said I wouldn’t expect that there would be any evidence that pointed towards the existence of a god, and I said so because there hasn’t been any yet. ‘

I would add “that you’ve heard of”, unless you are omniscient?

Often what we hear is sanitised, you’ll say that’s true of me also I’m sure.

Thank you for correctly interpreting my motives.
You might be interested to check out http://www.icr.org/ as well, if you haven’t already.

And guys (I presume), you keep using the adjective ‘sadly’, we are happy, contented people.

Regards
Ozzie

Posted by Ozziepa on 13/08/07 at 02:39 PM

(176)
Ozzie please don’t mistake and or misrepresent my fairness with compliance with your views, anyone can say and do what they want within reason in a democracy ,the fact that you and your fellow believers are patently wrong and out of touch is not illegal in our present society, and as for reading more of the scriptures of whatever it is you wish me to read, no thank you.
I go through my life without ever pushing my beliefs upon others, which SADLY cannot be said of yourself and those who choose to believe fairy stories that man was meant to grow out of ! as with Santa and the Easter bunny.
d.d.

Posted by dondavey on 13/08/07 at 10:47 PM

Unless you live like ghandi (bare foot and pockets empty )giving your whole life for the benefit of those worse off you are not going to your heaven you are pissing in your gods eye and on the bible that you read but dont follow.PS you are not mother theresa or a true follower of god.ching ching..

Posted by steve on 14/08/07 at 07:14 AM

Still no answers Ozziepa, just denial and side stepping. The discoveries regarding our ancient relatives, hasn’t blown evolution apart, just the opposite. It gives science knowledge that answers many questions unanswered before and shows evolution in progress, as the two lived side by side until one out evolved the other, even a child could understand that verifiable evidence. Humility is in accepting viewable and verifiable reality, not mythical violent associated, monotheistic fantasy.

“Science is about experimentation and observation, I would’ve thought, not making up a whole story from a few bone fragments.”

I’d say science with its observable fragments and verifiable experimentation, has more veracity than making up a whole story without any supportable or verifiable evidence as with the myth of yahweh and it’s associated delusions. It is biblical accounts which are the true myths, nothing exists to support or substantiate anything to do with biblical accounts and never will. You can’t turn primitive fiction into factual evidence, even though you and your ilk desperately try to do so. It’s easy to see how blind and fearful you are, rejecting science, its growing discoveries and experiments. This shows a mind filled with the horror of facing a future, no representing what you are programmed to believe. By the way, I don’t take any pharmaceuticals, nor any form of medicine, or drink tea. So all you are doing is displaying the closed narrowness of your mind in thinking people would act as you do.

IRC would have to be one of the most bizarre sites on the internet, not only is it American, which means it even more bizarre, but nothing on it provides anything to support creation. It’s just typical religious site, full of day dreams, childish fear and masses of fantasy and delusion. Happiness is in being in control of your future ozziepa, not your future being controlled by your fears and refusal to take responsibility for your life.

So ozziepa, Why aren’t you living in the life of jesus, bit hypocritical isn’t it. Why haven’t you given away all your money to those more in need, established your home for the needy. Why do you sanction the enslavement and torture of animals for your gluttony. Why aren’t any of you living as the mythical jesus dictates, you certainly don’t provide an example of who you follow. So why hasn’t your god, kept you fully informed through his son about the make up and workings of our universe, or are you just going to continue avoiding peoples questions. All it does is reinforce what the sane evolved of the world accept, gods followers don’t have answers, just infantile denial of reality and threats of violent retribution towards all those who object to their insane rantings and actions.

Posted by stormbay on 14/08/07 at 11:21 AM

I,m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings fellow scribes ! but ive lived a great deal longer than most here ,i’ll wager, so believe me when i say to you that “this debate will never go away because Gods little helpers NEED to have something other than ” humanity ” to believe in ,in in order to cope with their existence’s and it goes back to the time when man became aware of his ” mortality “in other words man is the only life form on the planet who is AWARE that death his is imminent and if each and every one of us were honest it is a scenario we are ill equipped to deal with, dying is not the problem ! living with the knowledge that it is inevitable our entire lives IS !
Those with their beliefs in another place
or the hereafter maybe well live more contented lives and if so i wish i were able to embrace those beliefs , however i can not, and have never been able to subscribe to that scenario since childhood as i know instinctively as do the many who share them that that a god does not, never did, and never will exist.
d.d.

Posted by Don Davey on 14/08/07 at 12:47 PM

Don
#177 I was merely thanking you for your fairness and agree with your wish in #180

To have a confidence about the future is to experience true peace of heart.

Steve
:)

Stormy

If you come to conclusions about me without knowing me, maybe you’ve also made some other bad judgements based on similar ignorance. You wouldn’t know what I’ve done and you might be quite surprised at the truth of the matter.

I’m not in the least bit fearful, but quite the opposite.

God has kept me fully informed, it is you who used to be uninformed but now you can’t claim ignorance when you stand before Him, Your God as well as mine.

Regards

Ozzie

Posted by Ozziepa on 19/08/07 at 12:31 AM

Ozziepa, you follow a mythical delusion, that defines your reality and how you are. You along with all others enslaved to the despotic mythical yahweh, are easily defined by your veracity and by following god, shows you have none. Your attempts to equate me to a god, shows how pathetic and unevolved you are. Not only that but it shows how ignorant and insulting the superstitious god followers are in their desperation to gain some support for their fantasies. You demonstrate eminently by your inability to answer any questions, or provide evidence to support your belief. I never believe anything a god follower says, how can you, when all they have to support them, are lies and deceit.

Posted by stormbay on 19/08/07 at 11:02 AM

(181)
I,m confused steve ! ozzie ! one and the same ?
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 20/08/07 at 02:15 AM

Ozzie wont speak to me he is praying for my lost soul.

Posted by steve on 20/08/07 at 07:26 PM

don

Now there’s an original thought, can’t speak for steve though.

stormy

You betray the weakness of your argument by trying to use colourful adjectives.

Thought you’d done a bit of question dodging by the way.

Regards

Ozzie

Posted by kim valentine on 20/08/07 at 10:07 PM

#185, I’m happy to answer any rational questions, that don’t involve discussing biblical fantasy, except with verifiable facts. You may like to remind me of what questions of yours I failed to answer, so that I can, that’s if there really are any. I understand your desperation in trying to deflect away from your real veracity. It’s the most common infantile ploy of the religious, no facts, just deception and lies. So my answer to you again is,

“I never believe anything a god follower says, how can you, when all they have to support them, are lies and deceit.”

My arguments are based on fact, you have nothing but delusion and fantasy as empty support.

Posted by stormbay on 21/08/07 at 09:24 AM

HISTORICAL INTERVIEWS.— ADAM

Magazine: Well Mr.—er, how shall we say—Adam. How does it feel to be the World’s first celebrity?

Adam. Actually I had no choice in the matter. I think it’s just a case of, ‘some have greatness thrust upon them’. It can be a problem when you only have a future and you never had a past.

Magazine: I detect a little bitterness in your voice, are you unhappy with your lot?

Adam: Well, tell me how you would feel if you were denied a childhood, had no parents and arrived suddenly at adulthood, alone and as an only child, wouldn’t you feel that there was something missing in your life?

Magazine: Yes, I suppose so. Putting it that way, it does seem a bit rough.

Adam: Rough? That’s nothing. I get dumped in this garden - all very beautiful etc., and choc-a-block with funny animals, but where’s the house? You would have thought, in all that ‘creativity’ bit, they would have thought of a house. No house, no clothes, just me and all them animals. Gets bloody cold at night, and there’s quite a bit of fog around too. ‘To refresh the trees,’ so I’m told. All very well, but what about me?

Magazine: There certainly seems to be two sides to this story, Mr. Adam. It’s not the impression we get when we read the book.

Adam: Oh, it’s all there, but nobody seems to think about it. Very biased reporting. It always takes His side. He wouldn’t get away with it nowadays, but then, there were no Press Councils you could complain to. Besides, the story only got written a few centuries later, and by that time it was all hearsay evidence. When I was around, there was no language and no audience—in fact, I had to invent the first language bit.

Magazine: How come?

Adam: Well, the day after I get created, Big Daddy comes along and says, “Adam my boy, I’ve got a job for you.” You can’t exactly argue with Big Daddy, so I say, “What’s that?” and He says, “You see all these beasts knocking around, well, none of them have got names yet. Just be a good lad and find something suitable for them, will you.”

Magazine: Well, that wasn’t a big task, was it?

Adam: You must be bloody joking. Well, first of all, you’ve had to round them all up, and there were thousands of these bloody things. Lot more than there are now, what with the Flood and so many gone extinct etc. Then you’ve got to ‘name’ them. Have you any idea what sort of job that is?

Magazine: Er……… No.

Adam: Well, firstly, as I said, no one’s bothered about inventing a language. In fact, they haven’t even got round to an alphabet. Pencils and paper came along about three thousand years too late for this little exercise, so what do we have to do? I line them up, and I say to them, “your name is ‘cow’, can you remember that?” and all I get back is ‘Mooo’. So we try again. “Your name is ‘Dog’, and it says ‘Miaow’ and I say your name is ‘cat’, and it says ‘Woof”. By the end of the day, they’ve all forgotten what they’ve been called and they all get their names mixed up. Classic waste of time if you ask me!

Magazine: It seems you really did have a tough time.

Adam: Then I say to the Old Man, “Hey Dad, how come all these animals have got mates and I’m stranded here all on my own. Where’s my other half?” He thinks about this one for a bit, then He says, “O.K. You seem to have a point there. I’ll see what I can do.” Next thing I know I get a knockout drop of some sort, and when I come round, I’ve got a thumping great pain in my side and there’s old Eve standing there with this silly grin all over her face. Not that I’m not pleased to see her, but why do it that way. You don’t find the other animals wandering around clutching their sides with their ribs missing, do you? What did I do to deserve that? I can still feel it to this day - bloody painful, especially in cold weather. Bet that doesn’t come over in the Book!

Magazine: Then what happened?

Adam: Next thing we know there’s a hell of a fight going on upstairs. Real humdinger it is. Thunder and lightning everywhere, Angels blowing trumpets and one general great hullabaloo. Do you know how scary it gets the first time you hear thunder? It seems like Big Daddy has got a bit of a personality clash with old Lucifer, and the two of them are really going at it. Eventually Lucifer bows out. Big D’s got a bloody awful temper, and when he gets riled, there’s no knowing what he might do. You can’t argue with Him.
Straight after that, He comes downstairs and starts making ‘rules’. It’s been alright up till now, but then He says, and looks straight at Eve when He says it, “You see that tree over there, well, don’t you touch it. You can have anything else, but don’t touch that!!!”
I can see Eve thinking to herself, but she doesn’t say nothing.
He’s looking a bit tired and I think He could do with a day off. All this creativity must take a lot out of you!

Posted by Gerry Mander on 21/08/07 at 10:15 AM

Magazine: Things sound so simple when you read the Book, but I suppose life is never that simple.

Adam: Too right it ain’t. Next thing we know, there’s this new thing in the Garden. It’s got no legs and no name, ‘cos it wasn’t around when I was doing my naming stunt. It comes up to Eve and says, “Trust me. My name is Serpent.”
This is old Lucifer in disguise, but we don’t know that. Then he says to Eve, “See that tree over there, well, that’s really my property. There are some lovely apples on it - very tasty. You can have them if you want.”
But Eve’s a bit wary of this, seeing what Big Daddy has told her.
“Oh, it’s alright,” says the Serpent, “Big D’s a bit jealous of me and He doesn’t want to lose His influence. You go ahead if you feel like it. You don’t have to, of course, but if you really feel like it, you might find it’s a bit of a revelation.” Real slippery old customer is this one. Would have made an excellent second-hand car salesman if he hadn’t gone into politics. “Of course, you also know it’s called the Tree of Knowledge, don’t you, and with the lack of education that you’ve had to put up with it could do you quite a bit of good,” he says meaningfully. “Anyway, I’m your friend, and I’ll always look after you,” and with that, he slithers off.
Anyway, Eve’s all at sixes and sevens now and doesn’t know what to think.
“Just do it for Adam,” the thing calls back over its’ shoulder, and then we don’t see it again.

Magazine: Seems a bit mean, doesn’t it?

Adam: Mean? You say, Mean! There’s poor Eve - only two days old - no education - no parental guidance - doesn’t even know the word conscience and there’s this whacking great lump of temptation shoved in her way. Confusing, to say the least.

Magazine: Didn’t you do anything to stop her?

Adam: Me? How could I? I was still recovering from a hard day naming beasts, and apart from that, my side was bloody sore, so I decided to have a little nap. When I woke up, there was Eve sitting beside me with this bright red juicy apple - with a big bite out of one side.
“There, you see. No ill effects and I’m sure Big Daddy is not going to miss just one. Anyway, scrumping is such fun - have a bite - it’s delicious!”
Well, Big D wasn’t around, so I thought, what the Hell, and took a bite. It wasn’t that it was just delicious, it did seem to have some side effects. It was after that, that I began to notice Eve for the first time – in that way, I mean and it was only a short step from there to ‘getting down to business’. We must be one of the few couples who have only known each other for two days and who both decide to lose their virginity together!
It was after that that Eve began to get a bit self-conscious. “You know, she says, not only have we not got a house, which means no privacy, we haven’t got any clothes either.” How can a woman get along without clothes, I ask you!? Anyway, we had a good look round, and I saw her eyeing some of the more furry beasts, but I put a stop to that. The best we could find were a couple of jolly old fig leaves. Not much cover, but it started to add a new dimension to things. Just as I was getting interested in a little bit of ‘dalliance’ again, along comes Big Daddy. Jumps out from behind a bush and shouts “Gotcha!”

Magazine: Doesn’t sound too good. Didn’t He let you explain?

Adam: Big Daddy? You’ve got to be joking! There were no lawyers for Human Rights in those days. Big D had it all his own way. The next thing we knew, there was this Angel flying along behind us beating our butts with this flaming sword. When you’re only wearing a fig leaf, you can imagine, this is quite persuasive. Anyway, we had to run for our lives. We ran out through this big gate and dived for cover, and the next thing we know, the gates clang shut. Five minutes later they open again, and all these newly named beasts are chucked out. By this time they’re all fighting each other, and they all run off in different directions. the rest of the story, of course, is history, so there’s not much more to tell.

Magazine: Well, that certainly puts a new perspective on things, and we will try to clear things up for you in our magazine. Thank you for the interview.

Adam: Now of course we get blamed for everything. Five thousand years later they’re still dipping their kids in the water trying to wash away our influence. The only bit of fun we ever had and He’s still blaming us. Talk about holding a grudge! Just a bloody apple! Look what they do now, AND they get away with it. Forgiveness of Sins, my rib

Magazine: Sure sounds a bit rough. Look, I’ll try and publish this to put the record straight. But I’m afraid this is all we have time for. Thank you for the interview.

Adam: It’s a pleasure. But just one thing before you go, would you like to purchase an original fig leaf? Just a fiver. Eve wants to do a bit of shopping!

Posted by Gerry Mander on 21/08/07 at 10:16 AM

Intelect-based atheists; wake up to your heart!!! Broaden your research through your heart. It amazes me that so many people, even intelect-based ‘chrissos’, who go through life without knowing their very own personalised throbber - a fantastic connection.

Posted by cupboardbound on 23/08/07 at 10:21 AM

Intelect-based atheists and intelect-based chrissos; neither is better than the other.

Posted by cupboardbound on 23/08/07 at 10:44 AM

If there’s one thing that Gerry Mander’s hilarious posts (187 & 188) can teach us, it’s that religion is taken far too seriously by the majority of those who discuss it.
Thanks for restoring some balance, Gerry!

Well this has been fascinating, chaps, but I hate to be the 3 am phone call: God is dead. Nietzsche wrote his obituary.

Posted by Cameron on 24/08/07 at 09:27 AM

Re 189, 192.
The heart is a material object which has a vital function in keeping animals alive enough to use their material bodies (which include their material brains).

To use the word “heart” to mean something immaterial is to retreat into a fantasy world where communication is impossible because meaning has become arbitrary.

There’s not necessarily anything wrong with this except when you try to influence other people to inhabit your fantasy. Because the inability to communicate has made this impossible by the use of language and logic, coercion, reliance on the ignorance of others, brute force or trickery are the means that must be resorted to. The history of all theistic religions has demonstrated this.

Posted by Justa Bloke on 24/08/07 at 11:58 AM

A salutary tale.

There is an old saying in scientific circles, ‘there is no life on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours’.

However, the race is on to actually verify this, and this is why America is spending so many billions of dollars sending probes to Mars, with the eventual goal of landing someone there.

What really drives this is the exploration for evidence of Life on Mars, because if they find it, it will prove that life can start spontaneously without the intervention of a Divine Being.

Science trumps God!

The only alternative that I can see is that there once was a civilization there, but God didn’t like the way it was going and destroyed it, lock stock and barrel. He then started one here to see if it would be any better. Looking at civilization as it stands, we could be rapidly approaching the same situation as Mars, so BEWARE.

Venus is next.

Posted by Gerry Mander on 24/08/07 at 03:11 PM

Ozzie !
a question ! Adam and Eve had two boys Cain And Abel, now Cain killed Abel , and your Lord banished him to the land of “nod” where he got married and raised a family ! now do you not have problem with that ? the Question of course is ,who the bloody hell did he marry ? or did he come home and get his leg over with mum ? now this conundrum appears in the first few pages of the bible which i have read by the way.
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 24/08/07 at 06:30 PM

There is a marvelous anecdote from the occasion of Bertrand Russell’s ninetieth birthday that best serves to summarize his attitude toward God and religion.
A London lady sat next to him at this party, and over the soup she suggested to him that he was not only the world’s most famous atheist but, by this time, very probably the world’s oldest atheist.
“What will you do, Bertie, if it turns out you’re wrong?” she asked. “I mean, what if when the time comes, you should meet Him? What will you say?” Russell was delighted with the question.
His bright, birdlike eyes grew even brighter as he contemplated this possible future dialogue, and then he pointed a finger upward and cried, “Why, I should say, ‘God, you gave us insufficient evidence.’”

D.D

Posted by don davey on 24/08/07 at 11:57 PM

Millions of people have been killed in the name of some god, and most wars have had religion as a central cause.
Religion was explicitly behind the Crusades, the Inquisitions, and the mass killings of “witches” and heretics.
Many of these heretics were only guilty of expressing ideas that the churches didn’t like, but are commonly accepted now in science and social reform.
With the threat of heresy, the churches effectively set back humankind’s advancement by hundreds of years.
More recently, the German leaders in WWII (like in many other warring countries) exhorted their people that God was on their side, and used religion to unite them.
Religion is also at the root of most of today’s international problems. Just imagine how much more peaceful the world would be without beliefs in gods causing so much strife.
d.d.

There is an argument for belief in God that is called Pascal’s Wager, named for Blaise Pascal who conceived it.
The argument goes like this: Either there is a god or there isn’t.
If you believe in God, and God exists, then you win big time and go to heaven.
If you don’t believe in God, and God exists, you lose big time and go to hell.
If there is no god, then you haven’t lost much by believing.
So the obvious choice is to believe in God, because it’s simply the best bet.

Pascal’s Wager has several faults.
The biggest problem is that it’s not a proof of any god’s existence; it’s just an argument for believing, a method of extorting the gullible thru fear.
Like many other such arguments we have discussed, it also fails to denote exactly which god it refers to.
Pascal’s Wager could be applied to any god that offers rewards and punishments.
Taken to the extreme, following the wager would necessitate betting on the god with the worst hell, so it could be avoided.

Another problem with Pascal’s Wager is that it implicitly assumes that the odds of the two possibilities are similar.
Since the odds of the Christian god existing are zero, the wager creates a false dilemma.

The last problem with Pascal’s Wager is that it completely ignores intellectual integrity and honesty.
As an example, let’s talk about belief in Santa Claus.
Don’t we have more respect for a child who figures out that Santa doesn’t exist, and says so, rather than continuing to lie so he can get more presents?
It’s a sign of growing integrity and maturity for children to stop believing in Santa. Similarly, adults can give up belief in a god when they realize that there’s no real evidence for their god.
d.d.

Posted by don davey on 25/08/07 at 12:28 AM

Snap out of your limited comments and excitements that give lordship to your variably inadequate intellectual potential. Yeah wakeup to your heart. It is the wellspring of your desire and its fulfillment.

Posted by 0omniscience=faith on 26/08/07 at 11:16 AM

Oo=f, your post #199 makess no sense in the light of the incontrovertible facts about the heart I set out in #194.

Posted by Justa Bloke on 26/08/07 at 01:09 PM

#199, god is the most limited concept there is. Evolution, science, reality are unlimited, open and unfolding. God is war, suppression, war, denial, war, deceit, war. All evidenced and verified by history.

Posted by stormbay on 26/08/07 at 03:43 PM

Be told by a better intellect; you guys are running on a closed circuit treadmill. Open your doors to fuller perceptions.

Posted by 0omniscience=faith on 26/08/07 at 10:37 PM

Oomni… please give me a definition of “heart” and a description of its function so we can continue to discuss it. All the textbooks on anatomy and physiology I’ve read seem to support what I’ve written, but I have an open mind. They could all be wrong and you right.

I run on nobody’s treadmill. In fact I don’t run at all if I can avoid it.

Posted by Justa Bloke on 27/08/07 at 10:02 AM

comprehension of many things incl heart requires more than scientific understanding (incl the spindly legged elephants) and intelect (intelect is always limited).

apart from personal experience, which is the only source of appreciation of the the road to fulness of heart, i indicate don huan’s mention of the memory function of muscles and casually recall recent press claiming that a person began doing radically out-of-character things, such as sky-diving rather than playing cards, and was boggled to find that the previous owner of his transplanted heart was an extreme sportsman.

those who slumber in the spirit, allowing them to be struck by atheist syndrome, will tend to tear apart the latter comments and stand quiet about the former (road to fulness) which they can only calculate as meaning something that cannot be scientifically proven or intellectually hypothesised. This is where they throw out the Holy Spirit. This is a blind man talking, but one who has been through many hoops.

Posted by cupboardbound on 28/08/07 at 11:08 AM

I think some people believe in something so much that it may physically alter their bodies. Possibly a disorder of some sort.

Posted by Katy McNiel on 22/07/08 at 11:38 AM

I’m considering getting into the Forex market soon and am starting to do some homework. If someone could just lay out how things work and how you actually make (or lose) money, that would be nice. Also, what exactly is a pip and a lot? Thanks in advance.